Label
Plan Commission Study of Data Centers
Councilmmbers Martinez, Morris, Gadus, Jones, Kramer & McPherson
Title
Submitting to the Toledo City Plan Commission a request to conduct a study of Data Centers; their use of public resources and potential positive or negative effects on the City of Toledo; and declaring an emergency.
Summary
SUMMARY & BACKGROUND:
Toledo City Council is requesting a study by the Toledo City Plan Commission to research the potential effects from the development of data centers. City leaders and residents alike should know about pros and cons involved with this important trend which will likely bring more data centers to Toledo and Northwest Ohio.
Data centers are buildings that house the infrastructure needed to run computer networks, including servers and storage drives, and have been through a recent boom in development due to the rapid rise of artificial intelligence.
According to the International Energy Agency, a conventional or mid-size data center draws as much electricity as 10,000 to 25,000 households. The Lincoln Institute reported that in 2023, US data centers consumed nearly 176-terawatt hours of electricity, and this energy usage is rising every year.
Another important aspect is that water consumption is especially high at data centers, as they use it to provide constant cooling for the sensitive machinery and servers. The Environmental and Energy Study Institute estimates that 80% of water used by data centers evaporates, and for the 5,426 data centers nationwide, 449 million gallons of water are drawn daily.
The development of data centers in our region could affect our city's explicit goals for reducing carbon emissions. In 2021, Toledo City Council passed a resolution to reduce greenhouse gases emissions by 30% by 2030, below 2010 levels. Increasing electric consumption produced by natural gas or oil power plants increases greenhouse gas emissions even if data centers do not emit large amounts of carbon from t...
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