Last week, I presented at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE)’s Summer Study on Industry. The conference, themed “Industrial Competitiveness and the Evolving Energy Landscape,” centered around innovation, efficiency, and advances in energy solutions for the industrial sector, which accounts for one-third of total U.S. energy consumption. Presentations covered a broad spectrum, including industrial heat pumps, the role of leadership, and data centers.
My presentation explored how cross-sector collaboration can promote energy efficient data centers. The appetite of U.S. data centers is rapidly expanding, according to a 2024 Berkeley Lab report. In 2023 alone, these facilities consumed 176 TWh of energy, representing 4.4 percent of total electricity consumption. This figure is projected to skyrocket, reaching 325 to 580 TWh by 2028. This dramatic increase concerns conservationists, as it has already prompted electric utilities to propose delaying coal-plant retirements and building more polluting gas-fired power plants to meet the demand.
The expansion of data centers in South Carolina has brought together data center operators, local government, and energy providers, each with a vested interest in their development. The Coastal Conservation League engages with these stakeholders to champion environmental protections and consumer protections. There is an opportunity for South Carolina stakeholders to deepen their engagement on energy efficiency and collaborate effectively to find innovative solutions. Drawing from successful partnerships, several learnings emerge that our stakeholders could readily adopt:
- Development of energy efficiency technologies benefits from collaboration across all stages of the innovation life cycle.
- Government funding plays a critical role, particularly in the earliest stages. This funding can be invested in technologies that have transformative potential but have long payback periods or high initial investment requirements that are too risky for the private sector.
- Energy providers step in later in the innovation process. Providers of distributed energy resources, such as microgrids and battery storage, could benefit from colocation at data centers and foster a greater collaborative role with data center developers and operators than electric utilities.
- Data center sustainability should take a holistic approach that considers energy efficiency as well as carbon emissions and water usage.
- Establishing energy efficiency standards could increase data center operators’ investment in energy-efficient technologies, thereby accelerating reduction of their energy consumption. Complementing this, innovative rate designs can incentivize data centers to curb their energy use and protect customers from rate increases.
Read through the presentation to learn more.
Kennedy Bennett ACEEE presentation