Data Centers in Chesterfield, VA
Google Data Centers in Chesterfield, Virginia
General Data Center Resources
What Are Data Centers? – Sierra Club
Data Centers In Virginia – Piedmont Environmental Council
The True Cost of Data Centers – Business Insider
Unconstrained Demand: Virginia’s Data Center Expansion and It’s Impacts – Sierra Club Virginia Chapter
The Urgent Case Against Data Centers – Food & Water Watch
Video: Inside the secretive world of America’s AI data centers – Business Insider
Data Center Energy Needs & Grid Impacts
AI Data Centers Are Sending Power Bills Soaring – Bloomberg
Data Center Power Demands Are Contributing to Higher Energy Bills – Environmental and Energy Study Institute
Data Center Water Usage
Data Centers and Water Consumption – Environmental and Energy Study Institute
How data centers are deepening the water crisis – Business Insider
Data Center Pollution & Health Impacts
AI runs on dirty power — and the public pays the price – Business Insider
See where diesel-powered data center generators are polluting Virginia – The Washington Post
Communities Are Raising Noise Pollution Concerns About Data Centers – Environmental and Energy Study Institute
New Study Finds On-Site Power at Virginia Data Center Could Result in $53 Million – $99 Million in Annual Health Damages – Piedmont Environmental Council
Peer-Reviewed Research on Data Centers
Al Kez, D., Foley, A. M., Laverty, D., Del Rio, D. F., & Sovacool, B. (2022). Exploring the sustainability challenges facing digitalization and internet data centers. Journal of Cleaner Production, 371, 133633.
Azarifar, M., Arik, M., & Chang, J. Y. (2024). Liquid cooling of data centers: A necessity facing challenges. Applied Thermal Engineering, 247, 123112.
Bergmann, R., & Solomun, S. (2021). Diesel death zones in the amazon empire: environmental justice in algorithmically mediated work. AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research.
Boatwright Library. (2026, June 22). Virginia Data Centers Resources. University of Richmond
Columbia University. (2024). Landscape Assessment of AI for Climate and Nature.
Diaz Bejarano, N., & Valdivia, A. (2026). Thirsty forests and expansive droughts: The environmental impacts of data centers in Latin America. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 9(3), 937-959.
Edwards, D., Cooper, Z. G. T., & Hogan, M. (2025). The making of critical data center studies. Convergence, 31(2), 429-446.
Ebert, K., Alder, N., Herbrich, R., & Hacker, P. (2026). AI, climate, and regulation: From data centers to the AI Act. Computer Law & Security Review, 61, 106326.
Elgamal, M., Mahmoud, A., Wei, G. Y., Brooks, D., & Hills, G. (2025, March). PFASware: Quantifying the Environmental Impact of Per-and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) in Computing Systems. In 2025 Design, Automation & Test in Europe Conference (DATE) (pp. 1-2). IEEE.
Elgamal, M., Mahmoud, A., Wei, G. Y., Brooks, D., & Hills, G. (2024). The environmental impact of forever chemicals in computing systems. In Workshop on Hot Topics in Ethical Computer Systems.
Falk, S., & Van Wynsberghe, A. (2024). Challenging AI for Sustainability: what ought it mean? AI and Ethics, 4(4), 1345-1355.
Feldscher, K. (2026, April 8). Analyzing air pollution health, economic risks from AI data centers. School of Public Health, Harvard University.
Garcia, M. (2024). AI Uses How Much Water? Navigating Regulation of AI Data Centers’ Water Footprint Post-Watershed Loper Bright Decision. Tex. Tech L. Rev., 57, 517.
Guidi, G., Dominici, F., Gilmour, J., Butler, K., Bell, E., Delaney, S., & Bargagli-Stoffi, F. J. (2024). Environmental Burden of United States Data Centers in the Artificial Intelligence Era. arXiv e-prints, arXiv-2411.
Guidi, G., Dominici, F. (preprint). The hidden water geography of U.S. hyperscale data centers in the AI era.
Gustafson, E. (2025). AI Data Centers in the United States: A Media Framing Analysis. Florida Communication Journal, 50(2).
Kairos Fellows. (2025). Google’s Eco-Failures.
Khatib, L., Pham, A., Ahmed, K., & Frenkel, V. S. (2025). Data Centers and Water: Challenges and Solutions for Sustainable Cooling. Journal of the American Water Works Association, 117(8), 48-53.
López, A. (2023). Seeing microplastic clouds: Using ecomedia literacy for digital technology in environmental education. The Journal of Environmental Education, 54(1), 46-57.
Matisa, E. A., Skrutek, M., Bruna, A., Ozols, E., & Lescinskas, P. (2023). Unveiling the Green Mirage: Exposing Greenwashing in Tech Companies.
Markelius, A., Wright, C., Kuiper, J., Delille, N., & Kuo, Y. T. (2024). The mechanisms of AI hype and its planetary and social costs. AI and Ethics, 4(3), 727-742.
MacLean, J. (2022). Transnational Corporations and Climate Governance: A Case Study of Amazon. com’s Net-Zero Climate Pledge. Dalhousie LJ, 45, 469.
Monserrate, S. G. (2022). The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage. MIT Case Studies in Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing.
Pan Fang, T., & Greenstein, S. (2025). Where the cloud rests: The economic geography of data centers. Strategy Science, 10(4), 404-420.
Rikap, C., & Weko, S. (2025). A green transition orchestrated from Big Tech clouds? Globalizations, 1-20.
Sander, B. (2025). Confronting risks at the intersection of climate change and artificial intelligence: The promise and perils of rights-based approaches. Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights, 09240519251336962.
Sastry, G., Heim, L., Belfield, H., Anderljung, M., Brundage, M., Hazell, J., … & Coyle, D. (2024). Computing power and the governance of artificial intelligence. arXiv preprint arXiv:2402.08797.
Shi, T., Kumar, R., Hua, I., & Ding, Y. (2025). When Servers Meet Species: A Fab-to-Grave Lens on Computing’s Biodiversity Impact. ACM SIGENERGY Energy Informatics Review, 5(2), 34-40.
Siddik, M. A. B., Shehabi, A., & Marston, L. (2021). The environmental footprint of data centers in the United States. Environmental Research Letters, 16(6), 064017.
Taffel, S. (2023). Data and oil: Metaphor, materiality and metabolic rifts. New media & society, 25(5), 980-998.
Tansel, B. (2022). PFAS use in electronic products and exposure risks during handling and processing of e-waste: A review. Journal of Environmental Management, 316, 115291.
United Nations University (UNU). (2026, June 3). Environmental Cost of Artificial Intelligence: Carbon, Water, and Land Footprints.
Vrikki, P. (2024). Measuring Up? The Illusion of Sustainability and the Limits of Big Tech Self-Regulation. Sustainability, 16(23), 10197.
West, E. (2022). Decoding Amazon’s climate pledge. Amazon: At the Intersection of Culture and Capital, 269.
Yale School of the Environment. (2026, July 10). Data Centers, Urban Heat, and AI Growth.