Well datacenters ARE rated by their power usage. And then there is a PUE ratio which indicates how much power is to be used by feeding the equipment vs overall usage for supporting equipment (cooling).

Just this week we launched a datacenter hat runs 100% on renewable energy even in case when diesel engines have to turn on and seeking LEED certification: https://delska.com/about/news-resources/delska-newsroom/dels... - the available energy to the DC is always trumpeted in topic. Yeah, we are kind of proud of technical achievements and efficiency achieved.

But we have the luxury as being slightly nordic, not needing to consume water for cooling. And what is not widespread but taking effect is that datacenters are able to give the heat for useful purposes like heating homes. It needs datacenter to be in city and cooperation for gov agencies, but this is the path that is being taken across countries: https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/06/sustainable-data-cen...

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nDRDY 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

>Well datacenters ARE rated by their power usage

Exactly - would be nice if that information was public knowledge!

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pastage 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

You do not want a modern datacenter near people.

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will4274 4 days ago | parent [-]

Why? Datacenters have smaller effects on neighbors than other industries. No runoff like farming, no pollution like factories

	▲	pastage a day ago \| parent [-]
		Modern datacenters use local power generation that means lots of bad pollution worse than most factories. There is really bad sound pollution from many of them. They are enormous and create barriers where people should be able to move around.