Data centers are the first real test of the region's climate ambitions. They might also create opportunities to achieve them.
A Sightline Special Report by Sightline's Climate and Energy Program Director Emily Moore. Published on May 14, 2025.
For a full list of sources, attributions, and appendices, as well as charts and graphics, please download the PDF version of this report at www.sightline.org.
Introduction & Executive Summary
"Northwest data centers' electricity use could more than double, imperiling climate goals."
"Data centers guzzle power, threatening WA's clean energy push."
"Energy demand from data centers growing faster than West can supply, experts say."
Reading these and other recent headlines, it would be reasonable to conclude that a few power-hungry data centers could force Oregon and Washington State to capitulate on their US-leading climate goals. Is that true?
In this report, Sightline analyzes the extent to which data centers have contributed to global warming pollution in Oregon and Washington. Further, Sightline examines how the industry's continued growth could affect the Northwest's ability to meet its ambitious commitments to transition from polluting fossil fuels to abundant clean energy.
To be sure, data centers arouse a host of concerns unrelated to greenhouse gas emissions. Worries include data centers inflating residential utility bills, the facilities' seemingly unquenchable thirst for water, and the biases in the artificial intelligence (A.I.) models that data centers increasingly power. This report does not touch on those topics, intentionally keeping a narrow focus on data centers' climate impacts.
What we found complicates typical media narratives.
Climate-warming emissions, including those from generating electricity, have dropped in both Oregon and Washington over the past decade despite data center load growth. Further, state policies prevent utilities from building new fossil fuel-generating plants in Oregon and Washington to power data centers, shielding the region from the alarming trend taking hold across the United States.
Data centers have, however, increased a handful of Northwest utilities' reliance on purchasing dirty electricity and likely slowed each state's transition to carbon-free energy. And if data centers gobble up electricity at the levels many analysts anticipate, they could push some Northwest utilities to rely on power from gas and coal burned in neighboring states with weaker environmental regulations for decades longer than they would have otherwise.
Still, the current spotlight on data centers' power consumption obscures the even greater electricity demand - from cars, buildings, and industry - that will follow if decarbonization goes according to plan.
Northwest leaders can transform today's challenge meeting data centers' demand for electricity into an opportunity to accelerate an economy-wide clean energy transition, drawing from tech companies' deep pockets to help pay for it. They can speed build-out of the electric grid to unlock everyone's access to the cheapest solar and wind power; make it easier for tech companies to invest in clean energy innovation; lift obsolete limits on data center operators sourcing clean resources; and transform data centers from passive energy hogs into active grid participants - and maybe even grid assets. All the while, leaders can work to make Northwest data centers the cleanest in the world.
Data centers are the first test of the Northwest's climate ambitions. How leaders respond may chart the course for the rest of the economy's clean energy transition.
Chapter 1: Baseline.
Northwest data centers' climate record.
Low taxes and cheap power attract data centers to the Northwest
Data centers have dotted the Northwest for decades. For example, the Westin Building Exchange, a data center in downtown Seattle, began leasing its server space to tech companies in 2001. In 2006, Google opened its first data center in The Dalles, Or...