Impacts of Data Centers

Illinois has seen a rapid increase in planned data center developments because our state has access to water for cooling, flat land to build these massive facilities, favorable tax incentives, and an educated workforce and industry. Data center development has attracted interest from stakeholders because of 1) tax revenue and 2) the economic benefit of short-term construction jobs and the indirect value to local economies that come from them. That said, there are a number of negative impacts of data centers, including: local community impacts like noise and land-use concerns, impacts on water resources, air pollution impacts, and utility bill impacts.