Quentin Good

Our digital lives have real-world impacts. Amidst the AI data center boom and concerns about its environmental impact, another digital industry with massive environmental costs has started to slip under the radar: cryptocurrency mining. Crypto mines can share many of the same characteristics as data centers – a large industrial facility with servers and cooling equipment. The big difference is what type of computing goes on at a crypto mine.

Northern Virginia has been Ground Zero for the explosive growth of data centers in the U.S. “Data Center Alley” in Loudoun County is considered the data center capital of the world, with 53.3 million square feet of data centers in operation or under development. According to Loudoun County, not a single day has passed without data center construction in 14 years.

In the early 1970s, electric utilities gazed into their forecasting crystal balls and saw a future of ever-increasing demand for power – a situation not that different from today’s forecasts of skyrocketing electricity demand growth driven largely by data centers. In 1974, the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) projected that U.S. electricity demand would increase by 7.5% annually through 1983.