Data Centers and Their Environmental Impact: Can Space Help?

Key Points

• Electricity Demand: AI data centers may see a staggering 165% increase in electricity demand by 2030.
• Environmental Concerns: The reliance on fossil fuels for over half of the energy in data centers poses risks to climate progress.
• Space Solutions: High-profile figures like Sam Altman and Jeff Bezos are exploring the potential of placing data centers in space.
• Investment in Technology: Startups are actively developing technology to make space-based data centers a viable option.

The companies frantically building and leasing data centers are well aware that they’re straining grids, driving emissions, and guzzling water. The electricity demand of AI data centers in particular could increase as much as 165% by 2030. Over half of the energy powering these sprawling facilities comes from fossil fuels, threatening to reverse progress toward addressing the climate crisis.

Some of the biggest names in artificial intelligence say they have a solution: Just stick these colossal computer clusters in space. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told manosphere podcaster Theo Vonn that he considers a massive expansion of data centers inevitable. “I do guess a lot of the world gets covered in data centers over time,” he said. (This is not, in fact, inevitable, but the result of unfathomably wealthy companies choosing to invest unfathomably large sums of money. Altman has speculated that he would quite literally put trillions into it, and OpenAI is part of the consortium behind the $500 billion Stargate project.)

Altman is aware, however, that some people might not like this. “I’ve spoken with environmentalists,” he said. Then, he offered a suggestion. “Maybe we put [data centers] in space,” he said. “I wish I had, like, more concrete answers for you, but like, we’re stumbling through this.”

Now, the idea of hurling data centers, the largest of which can cover over a million square feet, into orbit may seem impractical. But Altman’s not alone in considering it. Jeff Bezos and Eric Schmidt are also betting on the idea.

Altman has proposed creating a Dyson sphere of data centers around the sun, referring to a hypothetical megastructure built around a star to capture much of its energy. The rather glaring downside to this is that building it would likely require more resources than exist on Earth, and could make the planet uninhabitable. But somewhat more realistic plans are inching closer to reality. Startups like Starcloud, Axiom, and Lonestar Data Systems have raised millions to develop them.

There are at least 5,400 data centers in the United States, ranging from micro-size to thousand-server “hyperscalers,” and the number is growing fast. These facilities are expected to consume up to 12% of the nation’s electricity by 2028. Putting them in space, then, can seem like a panacea: solving the energy-use problem with 24/7 solar power, and freeing communities from the burden of air, noise, and water pollution.

There’s some real science behind this. Ali Hajimiri, an electrical engineer and professor with Caltech’s Space Solar Power Project, sought a patent for a “massively parallel computational system in space”—as in, a data center—back in 2016. Since then, launch costs have gone down (to around $1,500 per kilogram, by one estimate), and solar panels have gotten lighter and more efficient. Hajimiri and his colleagues recently proposed a lightweight space-based solar power system that could generate electricity at 10 cents per kilowatt-hour, significantly cheaper at scale than comparable systems here on Earth.

Such technology theoretically could power orbital data centers like those Altman imagines, though Hajimiri is still not sure when they could be built at the kind of scale companies like OpenAI demand. “I never want to say something cannot be done,” he said. “But there are challenges associated with it.”

For one thing, the systems he imagines process data relatively slowly compared to those on terra firma. They’d be constantly bombarded by radiation, and “obsolescence would be a problem” because making repairs or upgrades would be confoundingly difficult. Hajimiri believes that data centers in space could, someday, be a viable solution, but he hesitates to say when that day might come. “Definitely it would be doable in a few years,” he said. “The question is how effective they would be and how cost-effective they would become.”

The idea of simply putting data centers in orbit is not limited to the offhand musings of techies or the deeper thoughts of academics. Even some elected officials in cities where companies like Amazon hope to build data centers are raising the point. Tucson, Arizona, councilmember Nikki Lee waxed poetic about their potential during an August hearing, in which the council unanimously voted down a proposed data center in their city.

“A lot of people are saying data centers don’t belong in the desert,” Lee said. But “if this is truly a national priority,” then the focus must be on “putting federal research and development dollars into looking at data centers that will exist in space. And that may sound wild to you all and a little science fiction, but it’s actually happening.”

That’s true, but it’s happening on an experimental scale, not an industrial one. A startup called Starcloud hoped to launch a refrigerator-sized satellite housing a few Nvidia chips in August, but the launch date was pushed back. Lonestar Data Systems landed a miniature data center, carrying precious information like an Imagine Dragons song, on the moon a few months ago, though the lander tipped over and died in the attempt. More such launches are planned for the coming months. But it’s “very hard to predict how quickly this idea will become economically feasible,” said Matthew Weinzierl, a Harvard University economist who studies market forces in space. “Space-based data centers may well have some niche uses, such as for processing space-based data and providing national security capabilities,” he said. “To be a meaningful rival to terrestrial centers, however, they will need to compete on cost and service quality like anything else.”

For now, it’s much more expensive to put a data center in space than it is to put one in, say, Virginia’s Data Center Valley, where power demand could double in the next decade if left unregulated. And as long as staying on Earth remains cheaper, profit-motivated companies will favor terrestrial data center expansion.

Still, there is one factor that might encourage OpenAI and others to look toward the heavens: there isn’t much regulation up there. Building data centers on Earth requires obtaining municipal permits, and companies can be stymied by local governments whose residents worry that data center development might siphon their water, raise their electricity bills, or overheat their planet. In space, there aren’t any neighbors to complain, said Michelle Hanlon, a political scientist and lawyer who leads the Center for Air and Space Law at the University of Mississippi. “If you are a U.S. company seeking to put data centers in space, then the sooner the better, before Congress is like, ‘Oh, we need to regulate that.’”

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/climate-energy/data-centers-gobble-earths-resources-what-if-we-took-them-to-space-instead/. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org.