Data Centers

Data centers have begun to emerge as an impactful land use in our region and throughout the country. As cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI) expand across sectors, the data centers that power the internet can negatively affect the communities in which they are built. Since large-scale data centers are relatively new to our region, the BCPC has developed a resource page to help municipalities understand the impacts of data centers and craft ordinance language to help regulate these uses. Municipalities can preemptively guide where data center development makes the most sense for them by enacting ordinances and by understanding the infrastructure needed to build them.

Types of Data Centers

The following is a list of the most common types of data centers used, and a brief description of their function.

AI - A center that is designed to support the computation of artificial intelligence workloads.
Enterprise - A privately operated center, owned and operated by a business or organization, normally found at businesses and schools.
Managed Services - Centers that are managed by a third party on behalf of a company.
Colocation - A center that leases out servers to multiple clients, all located within one building or site.
Cloud - Centers that are typically in warehouse-like spaces and can take up hundreds of acres and contain millions of servers. (e.g., Amazon, Google, Meta)
Edge - Small data centers constructed off-site but close to localized businesses or other areas of need.
Modular - Mobile centers that used to provide additional support to infrastructure in times of need.

Community Impacts

Power Consumption

Data centers have significant impacts on the local power and electrical consumption in a community. There are several reasons for this, but the most common of those is due to their 24/7 operation and large-scale cooling requirements. According to IEA estimates for 2024, U.S. data centers consumed 183 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity. This is roughly the equivalent of the total electricity usage of a medium-sized country like Pakistan or Poland (which rank 26th and 27th in total power consumption in the world). Approximately 56 percent of the electricity used to power data centers comes from fossil fuels; the remainder comes from renewable and nuclear sources.

Water Consumption

On average, a large data center consumes approximately 5 million gallons of water per day, contributing to an estimated 449 million gallons per day of total water use across all U.S. data centers in 2021. A data center's water footprint is the sum of three use categories: on-site water usage, water use by power plants that supply power to the data center, and water consumed during the manufacturing process. Data centers that power AI operations consume more water than a typical data center due to their reliance on water-based cooling systems to cool the high-performance processing chips in the server machines. These data centers use water from various sources, including surface and groundwater, municipally obtained water, and purified reclaimed water. Data centers can place significant strain on water resources, as nearly 80 percent of the water used by the data center evaporates and cannot be reclaimed or returned to the municipal system.

Noise Pollution

One of the lesser discussed issues caused by data centers is noise pollution. Noise pollution is widely considered the presence of excessive, harmful, or unwanted sounds. The constant noise produced by servers, network switches, routers, air conditioning systems, and cooling fans can reach sound levels exceeding 80 decibels (dBA), which is comparable to the sound of a leaf blower. Although the noise is strongest within a few hundred feet of a data center, it can still carry and remain noticeable from more than half a mile away. Communities close to data centers have reported health concerns related to noise pollution, including sleep disturbance, headaches, hearing loss, elevated stress, anxiety, hypertension, and even cardiovascular risk. Noise pollution can interfere with communication, disrupt their normal wildlife behaviors like feeding and mating, and even force wildlife to change their migration patterns. To mitigate noise pollution, municipalities can adopt data center ordinances that set maximum allowable dBA levels or require specific noise mitigation measures.

Regulating Data Centers

Bucks County communities can develop ordinances to proactively address the land use, infrastructure, and operational impacts associated with this emerging development type. To successfully manage these impacts, we recommend municipalities consider adopting ordinance language that addresses all or part of the following strategies:

Ensure data centers are their own separate use and not generally permitted under warehouse uses.
Only permit data centers as a conditional use.
Require professional noise studies for the proposed sites—noise should not exceed 50 decibels at property line.
Include large buffer requirements to mitigate light and sound impacts
Require building facades to vary in texture and design.
Create community benefits agreements to directly address community concerns.

Below are a few examples of model and adopted ordinances in our region that provide more detailed regulations. We will continue to add to this resource page as new ordinances are adopted and new tools are implemented.