Behind the explosive growth and challenges of data centers in the AI era

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Did you know the average chat GPT request requires almost 10 times more electricity than a Google search? In tonight's Eye on America, Ben Tracy looks at the data centers that drive our digital lives and their growing demands for energy. [00:00:21] Speaker 2: This is a Google data center outside of Reno, Nevada. [00:00:25] Speaker 3: It's hard to imagine that there's a physical location where the Internet lives, but this is it. [00:00:31] Speaker 2: Inside are endless rows of servers and miles of cables, the arteries of the Internet. [00:00:38] Speaker 4: Is this everything from like somebody's doing a Google search, somebody's watching a cat video, and that's all coming through here? Absolutely. It's all that and more. [00:00:45] Speaker 2: Amanda Peterson Corio is Google's global head of data center energy. [00:00:50] Speaker 3: And these fans are cooling our data centers. [00:00:52] Speaker 2: On the rooftop, she showed us the hundreds of fans that keep all those computers humming. This is just one of at least 2,700 data centers that stretch from the suburbs of Virginia to the deserts of the West. They are mostly run by big tech firms and consume more than 4 percent of all electricity in the U.S. in 2022. That's projected to more than double to 9 percent by 2030. The nation's aging grid is also threatened by the soaring demands of artificial intelligence. It uses nearly 10 times the electricity of a typical Internet search. Is this amount of electricity use sustainable? [00:01:31] Speaker 3: It's a real challenge. As we look to the next decade, those demands continue to grow. And the real challenge is figuring out, how can we do this in a way that meets our climate goals? [00:01:43] Speaker 2: JOHN YANG: Google's planet warming emissions rose by 13 percent last year and have jumped nearly 50 percent since 2019. The company has spent heavily to bring new wind and solar power to the grid, and says 64 percent of the time its operations run on clean energy. But when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing, data centers still rely on gas and coal, creating more carbon emissions, fueling climate change. [00:02:12] Speaker 5: We need something that has that reliability, that works 24/7. [00:02:15] Speaker 2: JOHN YANG: That something may be here in the desert of Southern Utah. [00:02:19] Speaker 5: We call this the renewable energy corridor of Utah. [00:02:22] Speaker 2: JOHN YANG: Tim Latimer is CEO of Furvo Energy, which is drilling deep underground. [00:02:29] Speaker 5: How far down are you drilling here? Right now, we're at about 12,200 feet. [00:02:35] Speaker 2: JOHN YANG: And harnessing heat from the Earth's crust to create carbon-free geothermal energy. Right now, geothermal accounts for less than 1 percent of U.S. electricity. But Furvo has used fracking and drilling techniques, pioneered by the oil and gas industry, to vastly expand geothermal use across the country. It says this site alone could eventually power 400,000 homes. JOHN YANG: How big of a solution can this be? [00:03:01] Speaker 5: JOHN YANG: Yeah, we think that geothermal can be as much as 20 percent of the U.S. electricity grid. We can develop large projects that will really move the needle on the electric grid and climate change. [00:03:10] Speaker 2: JOHN YANG: Google is one of Furvo's customers, and plans to use geothermal energy to help power its Nevada data centers. [00:03:18] Speaker 6: JOHN YANG: So when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing, this thing is still cranking? [00:03:22] Speaker 2: JOHN YANG: And so is the demand for electricity. For "Eye on America," Ben Tracy, Reno. [00:03:33] Speaker 7: There's a new plan to power up a reactor at the site of this country's worst commercial nuclear disaster. A partial meltdown happened here in 1979 at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear plant. [00:03:45] Speaker 8: JOHN YANG: It was the first step in a nuclear nightmare. [00:03:51] Speaker 9: JOHN YANG: March 28, 1979, on the CBS Evening News, Walter Cronkite broke the news to the nation. There was a partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant. [00:04:02] Speaker 8: It's probably the worst nuclear reactor accident to date. [00:04:05] Speaker 9: JOHN YANG: Forty-five years later, it remains the worst commercial nuclear disaster in U.S. history, damaging the industry for decades. The remaining functional reactor at the site was last used five years ago. It shut down because it was losing money. Yesterday, the plant's current owner, Constellation Energy, announced it will spend $1.6 billion to restart that reactor. It's part of a 20-year deal to provide power to Microsoft data centers. Those centers power the company's growing artificial intelligence programs. JOHN YANG: Constellation says the plant meets the growing demand for clean, zero-carbon energy and will create thousands of jobs, saying in a statement, "This plant was among the safest and most reliable nuclear plants on the grid, and we look forward to bringing it back." NUCLEAR POWER: Nuclear power has a great safety record. JOHN YANG: Nuclear energy expert Professor Anna Erickson says demand for energy is exploding, [00:04:58] Speaker 10: in part due to AI. NUCLEAR POWER: AI requires energy that is 24/7. And the nuclear power is one of the best sources to provide that consistent need for energy. [00:05:11] Speaker 9: JOHN YANG: The reactor isn't expected to be online until 2028, and it first has to earn approval from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Nancy? NUCLEAR POWER: Michael George, thank you. [00:05:21] Speaker 11: JOHN YANG: Did you know the term "artificial intelligence" was coined 70 years ago by a Dartmouth professor to describe computers doing human thinking? Most of us don't spend much time thinking about AI, even as it takes over more and more of the world. It is also taking up more and more space on more and more ground, and that can change a community's landscape, as Janet Shamlin reports in tonight's Eye on America. [00:05:47] Speaker 12: NUCLEAR POWER: You'd be hard-pressed to find a pothole in Loudoun County, Virginia. NUCLEAR POWER: The roads are freshly paved and the schools are new, all paid for by tax revenue from the 200 or so oversized buildings in the county, known as data centers. [00:06:03] Speaker 13: NUCLEAR POWER: It has completely changed our economy from a failing economy to one of the strongest local economies anywhere in the country, and the data centers have done that. [00:06:11] Speaker 12: NUCLEAR POWER: Buddy Reiser helped bring them here over the past two decades. He's Loudoun's economic development director. The need for the centers is growing, alongside our dependence on artificial intelligence. To process and store the immense amount of digital information, they consume tremendous amounts of both power and water. NUCLEAR POWER: To put it in a more measured way, there are billions of AI searches every day. A bottle of water is used for every 10 to 50 of them. NUCLEAR POWER: Data centers have changed the landscape. NUCLEAR POWER: Industrial strength transmission lines crisscrossed the county, pushing power consumption up 240 percent over five years. [00:06:49] Speaker 1: NUCLEAR POWER: What do you see, bud? [00:06:50] Speaker 12: NUCLEAR POWER: Ben Keether bought this house in 2014 because it had a view of bucolic farmland. [00:06:55] Speaker 14: NUCLEAR POWER: Knowing what you know now about what your view would look like, would you buy here again? [00:07:01] Speaker 15: BEN KEETHER: I certainly wouldn't have paid the law for you. NUCLEAR POWER: I can tell you that. [00:07:05] Speaker 12: NUCLEAR POWER: Now the neighborhood sledding spotty overlooks. NUCLEAR POWER: Also has a view of a boxy data center under construction. It's among more than 100 new ones coming to Loudon. [00:07:18] Speaker 15: NUCLEAR POWER: I don't mind driving through an industrial zone where these facilities are sited properly, but when they start to come up directly on your community, you just can't leave it. [00:07:27] Speaker 12: NUCLEAR POWER: Northern Virginia is home to the highest concentration of data centers in the world. Loudon officials tout the benefits, saying the centers generate a third of the county budget on just three percent of land. And yet Buddy Reiser admits he has regrets. NUCLEAR POWER: Have you put enough guard rails around data centers in this community? [00:07:49] Speaker 13: BUDDY REISER: Sure. I think if we had it to do over again, we would do it a little bit different. NUCLEAR POWER: There's definitely instances where land has gotten too close to residential. There's instances where residential has gotten too close to commercial land. That's one of the things you deal with when you grow as fast as we've grown. [00:08:04] Speaker 14: NUCLEAR POWER: A single data center building is using as much as a city worth of power. [00:08:08] Speaker 12: NUCLEAR POWER: Julie Bolthouse is an environmentalist, advocating for the people who live near the booming industry. [00:08:14] Speaker 14: NUCLEAR POWER: It goes all the way to Alexandria. [00:08:15] Speaker 12: NUCLEAR POWER: She showed us this recreational trail, which used to feel rural, she says, before a data center moved in. [00:08:22] Speaker 14: NUCLEAR POWER: Once you start to deteriorate the community to the point where you're pushing people out, what is the value of that tax revenue anymore? [00:08:30] Speaker 12: NUCLEAR POWER: As his view has changed, so has Ben Keithler's perspective. He owns an IT company, so his own livelihood depends on the centers. But when one became his neighbor, he ran for president of his homeowners association and took a seat on a county zoning board. [00:08:45] Speaker 15: NUCLEAR POWER: I bought this property because it was one that had a view shed and something that I could relax. You know, I look outside now and I see that and I go, huh. [00:08:54] Speaker 12: NUCLEAR POWER: It's the pursuit of balance between community preservation and the growing need to keep a digital world connected. NUCLEAR POWER: For Eye on America, Janet Chamlin, Loudoun County, Virginia. [00:09:06] Speaker 16: NUCLEAR POWER: Today, General Motors announced a partnership to provide electric vehicle batteries to a recycling company, Redwood Materials, which is using the old batteries to help increase energy supply to fuel the growth of artificial intelligence. NUCLEAR POWER: In tonight's In Depth, CBS's Andres Gutierrez shows us how that company is using those EV batteries to keep AI off the grid. [00:09:29] Speaker 17: NUCLEAR POWER: In a field outside of Reno, rows of solar panels soak up sunshine. Beside them used electric vehicle batteries under white plastic. Their job, keep these two data centers running day and night. Each one draws roughly a megawatt, enough electricity to power a thousand homes. [00:09:49] Speaker 18: NUCLEAR POWER: The whole AI industry is struggling with how to access more reliable power on a fast time scale. [00:09:56] Speaker 17: NUCLEAR POWER: That scramble is real. A Department of Energy study says U.S. data centers could swallow up to 12 percent of all electricity by 2028, tripled today's share. In Texas alone, developers have filed plans for more than 100 new gas-fired plants, mostly for servers. NUCLEAR POWER: What does this solution offer that gas power doesn't? [00:10:16] Speaker 19: NUCLEAR POWER: Gas power is a great solution that data centers are turning to for speed, for speed 2 megawatts. This is an alternative way to accomplish that speed, but with a renewable power source. [00:10:25] Speaker 17: NUCLEAR POWER: Those recycled batteries come from Redwood Materials. The company already reuses 90 percent of North America's lithium-ion waste, batteries equal to a quarter million cars every year. Engineer Colin Campbell hates to toss out anything that can still work. [00:10:41] Speaker 20: NUCLEAR POWER: There's really very little wrong with them. Like maybe they have lost 20 percent of their capacity, maybe your electric vehicle's a little bit slower, and so that's appropriate that you don't want it in your car anymore, but it still works great. So we just looked at that and we're like, hey, why don't we use it to store energy for the grid? NUCLEAR POWER: Engineers kept the system simple. No pipes, no pumps. NUCLEAR POWER: And that's been a fun engineering effort for the engineering team to make something that is robust, that is incredibly useful, but also very cheap and quick to put in the field. [00:11:10] Speaker 17: NUCLEAR POWER: The company's confident that if it works here in rural Nevada, they can clone this setup a hundredfold. [00:11:15] Speaker 21: NUCLEAR POWER: We're finally really starting to see this tidal wave. [00:11:18] Speaker 17: NUCLEAR POWER: Redwood founder J.B. Straubel says the raw material is already rolling off America's roads. NUCLEAR POWER: How scalable is this? [00:11:25] Speaker 21: NUCLEAR POWER: There's no practical limit that we see on how we can scale this. It's one thing that makes us so excited. This is very modular. [00:11:33] Speaker 17: NUCLEAR POWER: And sidesteps the dirtiest [00:11:35] Speaker 21: NUCLEAR POWER: This is a different way to power the AI revolution. We're showing that AI doesn't have to be in conflict with the existing grid. [00:11:43] Speaker 17: NUCLEAR POWER: Yesterday's car batteries powering tomorrow's computer brains. Andres Gutierrez, CBS News, Sparks, Nevada. [00:11:50] Speaker 16: NUCLEAR POWER: The demand for artificial intelligence has sparked a boom in the construction of data centers all over the country. These facilities house computer systems to collect, process and store huge amounts of information. Skilled tradespeople, those who use wrenches, screwdrivers, and pliers are needed to build these high tech centers and keep them running. But there aren't enough of them. Here's Mark Strassman with tonight's Eye on America. [00:12:16] Speaker 22: NUCLEAR POWER: Brandon Fry feels squeezed by two businesses trending in opposite directions. Data centers such as this one he manages outside Chicago hum along with soaring demand. NUCLEAR POWER: Everything in here needs servicing. Everything in here needs service. Tech support, tech support, HVAC support, electricians. NUCLEAR POWER: But the supply of technical support he needs available 24/7 keeps shrinking. NUCLEAR POWER: What your customers don't want to hear is we can't find somebody for them. That's the last thing they want to hear and that will be the last conversation we likely have with them as a customer. NUCLEAR POWER: Data centers now compete with factories and manufacturing plants for electricians and plumbers. As older blue collar workers retire, younger people look at college and white collar jobs. NUCLEAR POWER: It's a growing labor crisis. Roughly 400,000 skilled trade jobs are unfilled in America. By 2033, it's estimated that number could hit close to 2 million. NUCLEAR POWER: You got to be able to do more with less. NUCLEAR POWER: Matt Breslin, an executive for a software company called IFS, says new technology is one solution. NUCLEAR POWER: And you can see this is changing dynamically. NUCLEAR POWER: His company sells this program that helps companies route and re-route [00:13:34] Speaker 23: their fleet of technicians. NUCLEAR POWER: You can take things like weather, traffic, different priorities and add that on top. NUCLEAR POWER: When you think about the labor shortages that are out there and you want to create more efficiencies and do more with less, this is how that's going to happen. [00:13:49] Speaker 22: NUCLEAR POWER: Back at the data center, Dan Brown knows there's a labor crisis. Dan Brown: We're always looking for good people to hire. NUCLEAR POWER: NUCLEAR POWER: But doesn't understand it. He told us in Chicago, experienced HVAC technicians make more than $150,000 without student debt. [00:14:07] Speaker 15: Dan Brown: The trays kind of got neglected. Dan Brown: So now there's a point that needs to be filled. NUCLEAR POWER: And you're busier than ever. [00:14:15] Speaker 22: Dan Brown: Oh, absolutely. NUCLEAR POWER: Across the floor, electrician Kevin Fischbach sees Hope, his local unions aggressively recruiting young workers for its apprenticeship program. Kevin Fischbach: They come into the trades and they got insurance, they got health care, they got a pension. NUCLEAR POWER: That's an update with power for Brandon Frye. [00:14:34] Speaker 16: Dan Brown: This career path is out there and it is a valuable career path to take. [00:14:38] Speaker 22: Dan Brown: But for now, the date is in and it's unmistakable. Help want it. Dan Brown: For Eye in America, I'm Mark Strassman, in Chicago.