Stratos, the Kevin O’Leary-backed data center in Utah, is projected to consume 9 gigawatts of power when fully up and running—more than double the annual electricity use of the entire state.
And if all that electricity comes from gas power plants, as proposed, that could cause an estimated 45 additional premature deaths a year, and up to $690 million in annual health damages, according to a new analysis by EmPower Analytics Group, commissioned by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
Gas power plants release dangerous levels of air pollution, including tons of PM2.5, or fine particulate matter, that can enter our lungs and bloodstream, raising the risk of asthma, lung cancer, heart attack, and stroke, among other health impacts.
We know about those health impacts from decades of research on exposure to fine particles, which are produced from consumption, says Michael Cork, founder and CEO of EmPower.
“While the scale of this type of facility being built is new,” he adds, “the science we are using to tie this pollution to health impacts is not.”
Pollution that would spread beyond Utah
The Stratos data center, if entirely powered by gas, could emit up to 3,140 tons of PM2.5 every year, per the analysis. That pollution wouldn’t only impact people in Utah; it would also spread to Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, and even Illinois.
All of that pollution could cause an estimated five to 45 premature deaths every year. But it could also increase heart disease and respiratory illnesses, new asthma cases, and nonfatal heart attacks—which would lead to more hospital visits, missed work, and lost school days.
Those impacts contribute to the potential millions in economic health damages, which range from $75 million to $690 million for the entire 9 GW project, depending on what sort of gas-generating technology is used.
Those estimates are for just a single year of Stratos’s operations. With each additional year, those health harms would recur and compound.
“These facilities are not expected to operate for just one year,” Cork says, “and so it’s important to consider the lifetime of a facility when you’re thinking about the potential health harms.”
‘Every gas scenario harms health’
The developers behind Stratos have yet to confirm details about the data center’s final buildout size or the specifics of what gas-generating technology it will use. Early plans for the project have said it would be entirely powered by natural gas.
EmPower’s analysis considers two scenarios: 3 GW of natural gas, which is the first phase of the project, and also 9 GW of gas, which is the expected full buildout.
It also considers two technologies: modern combined-cycle gas generation (the analysis uses emissions data from existing plants for these estimates) and gas-fired reciprocating internal combustion engines (for which the analysis uses permitted emissions from a data center facility that’s already been approved in Utah).
The former is associated with lower health harms; the latter technology could increase those harms by five- to six-fold, the report found.
“The technology choices do change the size of harm a lot,” Cork says, “but every gas scenario we evaluate harms health. In either scenario, if you are going to build a facility this size with methane gas, there are going to be health harms.”
Power plants with servers attached
The Stratos data center has already spurred multiple protests because of its potential water use and pollution impacts.
In May, responding to some of those protests, Utah Governor Spencer Cox said the project would “never” be solely powered by natural gas.
“The very first phase will be natural gas,” he told the Salt Lake Tribune, “but the other phases should not be. They should be nuclear, and they should be geothermal, and solar and other technology.”
Even with just the first phase, or 3 GW, using gas, the health impacts are serious, the analysis shows: up to 15 additional premature deaths a year, and up to $230 million in annual economic damages.
O’Leary Digital, which is developing Stratos, did not respond to a request for comment about this report or its expected power structure.
People may not yet associate living by a data center with pollution as harmful as, say, living near a coal plant.
Cork, however, reframes the situation, in hopes of helping people understand. “When I look at evaluating data centers using on-site power,” he says, “I like to think of them as power plants with servers attached.”