Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios
AI's climate impact is poised to hit marginalized communities disproportionately, but adopting guardrails will be an uphill climb in Congress.
Why it matters: Polluting facilities historically have been built near marginalized communities, and AI could exacerbate that trend.
- AI requires vast amounts of energy to train and run models, as well as water to cool data centers, and it creates waste and noise pollution.
- The technology also has the potential to accelerate energy innovation or protect biodiversity, and government officials are grappling with how to harness that potential while limiting harm.
Driving the news: Advocates are concerned that data centers and their associated infrastructure, such as power plants, will be built near people of color, exposing those communities to environmental harm and reducing access to affordable housing.
On Capitol Hill, Sen. Ed Markey introduced the Artificial Intelligence Environmental Impacts Act to create a voluntary reporting system for AI players to detail their footprint and require a government study on such impacts.
- During a Senate Commerce markup of AI legislation last month, Markey tried to advance the bill as an amendment, noting that many of the facilities being built are in vulnerable areas.
- Markey brought up the amendment but did not put it up for a vote.
- "They're going to places that are very close to where those environmental sacrifice wards and cities all across the country have always been," Markey said.
- "So we have to deal with it, because we know those fumes are going to be going up in those same neighborhoods to generate the electricity that then will be fueling the AI revolution."
Yes, but: Lawmakers are already hitting bumps in the road funding basic research and encouraging voluntary reporting from companies, let alone mandatory.
- During that markup, Sen. John Hickenlooper took issue with the Markey bill, noting that it dealt with the EPA, which is not part of the Senate Commerce Committee's jurisdiction.
- And Sen. Dan Sullivan said it was important to make sure no energy supply is limited, pointing to oil and gas restrictions imposed by the Biden administration in his home state of Alaska.
- "In some ways, I actually appreciated the underlying concept of his amendment, which is, 'Hey, we got to prepare for AI data centers' and I don't think we are, but one way you don't want to prepare is by limiting American energy," Sullivan told Axios.
And researchers say that while it's valuable to address the information gap, enough is already known to move beyond research and put guardrails in place.
- "We have sufficient data so far to start legislating in some aspects related to water and energy, regulating and preventing some of the harms that are coming," Union of Concerned Scientists' Jose Pablo Ortiz-Partida said.
- "Not acting fast enough will put us in a position where there is not going to be enough time for us to act later."
One way to move beyond research would be to establish reasonable federal energy efficiency standards for large computer data standards through the Energy Department, Public Citizen's Tyson Slocum said.
- But, he added, that's a long shot in this political environment.
