As the world keeps warming and electricity bills take center stage in national politics, the data center boom will drive up US carbon emissions and electricity costs. But a few simple policies could help bring both emissions and prices back down.
That’s the message of a new analysis from the Union of Concerned Scientists released [on January 20, 2026] which models a variety of scenarios for how to fuel the coming AI boom. … If policies stay the same as they currently are—with attacks on renewable energy being embedded into regulatory regimes …—we could see between a 19 and 29 percent increase in CO2 emissions from US power plants tied just to the energy needs of data centers over the next 10 years.
There are answers, though: Bringing back tax credits for wind and solar, which were political targets in last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill, would cut CO2 emissions by more than 30 percent over the next decade, even if data centers eat up a significant chunk of new demand for electricity.
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The Trump administration has made it extremely clear that it wants fossil fuels—specifically coal, the dirtiest form of energy—to power the AI boom.
