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Data Centers Are Stress-Testing the Grid: Communities and Wildlife are Feeling the Pressure
How data center growth is reshaping transmission planning, wildlife habitat, and community well-being.
A greater sage grouse flies over a plain in Jackson County, Colorado Credit: Howard Patterson
Data centers are expected to make up nearly half of U.S. electricity demand growth by 2030. As Artificial Intelligence (AI) and digital services expand rapidly, the U.S. is confronting a fundamental mismatch between the pace of electricity demand growth and the ability of the aging transmission grid to expand quickly enough to meet it.
A single AI-focused data center consumes as much electricity as 100,000 homes, fundamentally altering local and regional power flows. Historically, electricity demand grew gradually and predictably, giving utilities time to plan and build supporting infrastructure.
Today, large data centers can be planned and built within 18-36 months, while high-voltage transmission development routinely requires 7-10 years. This disparity between sudden increased electricity demand and slow transmission development creates serious challenges for grid reliability, affordability, and responsible siting.
The challenge isn’t a lack of electricity generation. In many regions, clean energy is already available or under development. The true bottleneck is transmission: the long-distance infrastructure needed to deliver power from where it is produced to where new, geographically concentrated data center loads are sited.
With about 4,000 data centers currently operating in the U.S. and 3,000 more under construction or planned, data center growth is putting unprecedented pressure on the electric grid. When electricity cannot move efficiently across the grid, congestion increases, reliability suffers, and utilities are more likely to rely on expensive, fossil fuel–based local generation.
Although a small number of large electricity users are responsible for rising demand, the costs of new transmission infrastructure are overwhelmingly shifted onto ratepayers, exacerbating energy affordability concerns.
Transmission development in the U.S. is highly fragmented. While the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) oversees wholesale markets and regional transmission planning, states maintain primary jurisdiction over intrastate and interstate transmission siting within their borders. FERC has limited “backstop” siting authority, meaning it can approve certain interstate transmission projects only under certain narrow circumstances.
This piecemeal governance structure makes it difficult to plan transmission at the scale and speed required to meet emerging data center demand while advancing public interest outcomes.
Poorly coordinated transmission expansion can impose significant environmental and social costs. Transmission development can cause direct habitat loss, fragmentation, and degradation, and disrupt migratory pathways.
Research has shown that linear infrastructure can also indirectly impact animal behavior, underscoring the importance of early planning, corridor-based siting, and avoidance of sensitive landscapes. For example, greater sage grouse have been shown to avoid habitats near transmission lines, which can limit mobility and reduce access to safe relocation options.
Data center-driven transmission proposals are already triggering land use conflicts, highlighting how rapidly large load development is outpacing existing siting frameworks. For example, in Wisconsin, a proposed $1.4 billion high-voltage transmission line intended to serve a large AI-focused data center has drawn opposition from landowners, farmers, conservation groups, and local governments after preferred routes cut through farmland, wetlands, and reforested lands. The proposal has raised concerns about habitat fragmentation, eminent domain, and long-term land stewardship.
These siting decisions can also exacerbate longstanding energy inequities. High-voltage transmission lines frequently cross Tribal lands and rural communities to serve distant data center hubs, while local residents continue to face energy affordability challenges and barriers to energy sovereignty.
Without meaningful engagement and early planning, transmission expansion risks repeating patterns of disproportionate burden on Tribal, Black, Brown, and rural communities.
What Smart Transmission Planning for Data Centers Can Look Like
The rapid growth of AI and data centers requires smarter, more proactive transmission planning that integrates wildlife and community impact analyses from the outset. Key principles NWF is working to advance include early identification of data center-driven transmission needs in regional and interregional planning processes; prioritization of upgrades and co-location along existing infrastructure corridors; and deployment of grid-enhancing technologies (GETs), where feasible, to increase power flow without building new lines.
When done right, transmission development can support grid reliability and energy affordability while advancing decarbonization, protecting wildlife, respecting Tribal sovereignty, and minimizing community disruption. Proactive, coordinated transmission planning is essential to ensure that the rapid expansion of data centers serves the public interest—not at its expense.
