Context & Motivation
One promise of AI is that it could help reverse the damage greenhouse gases are doing to our planet. But AI runs on data centres, which have a carbon footprint of their own. This idea comes from investigating how much carbon the data centre build-out could add over the next couple of decades, and what it would take to stop further damage before we think of reversing it.
A typical AI-focused data centre uses as much electricity as about 100,000 households, roughly 100 MW, and the largest being built today will use about 20 times more. Together, data centres used about 415 TWh of electricity in 2024, and that is expected to more than double to about 945 TWh by 2030. Most draw from the grid. Coal supplies about 30 percent of their electricity today, and renewables are expected to meet about half of the growth to 2030. For every unit of electricity the computers use, the average data centre uses about half a unit more for cooling and other overheads.
Where the carbon comes from
Running data centres caused about 180 million tonnes of CO2 in 2024, about half a percent of the world's combustion emissions, rising to about 300 million tonnes by 2035. Building them adds more. Much of the carbon is locked into steel, concrete and chips before the first token is made, and for data centres on very clean power this can be more than 40 percent of their total.
What one site looks like:
A 100 MW AI site on today's average electricity mix emits about 380,000 tonnes of CO2 a year, about what 83,000 cars emit. Over 20 years, including construction, that is about 8.1 million tonnes.
Why this matters for the climate:
Warming tracks the total CO2 the world ever emits, about 0.45 degrees C for every 1,000 billion tonnes. The world has only about 130 billion tonnes left to emit for an even chance of staying under 1.5 degrees C. The IPCC finds that each extra fraction of a degree raises the risks: coral reefs would decline by 70 to 90 percent at 1.5 degrees C, but virtually all would be lost at 2. Data centres' own 20-year footprint adds only about 0.003 to 0.005 degrees C, or about 0.01 to 0.02 if the extra fossil fuel that AI may help produce is counted. That sounds small, but it is between 4 and 36 percent of the remaining budget in 20 years, depending on how fast data centres grow.
In the first three months of 2026, local opposition blocked or delayed at least 75 US data centre projects worth about 130 billion dollars, and opposition groups more than doubled to over 800 across 49 states. Their concerns are electricity, water, noise and whether they get enough in return. Many communities feel they are not getting a fair bargain. DaisyGrove tries to close that gap: a data centre that repays its carbon debt.
Target Audience
A. Climate-impacted communities: The carbon cost lands on everyone, but not equally. People living below melting glaciers, on coasts facing rising seas, and in places hit by floods, fires and drought are affected far more than others. Each disaster has its own causes, which scientists continue to study, and this idea does not claim to prevent any of them. It proposes that these communities should share in the benefits of the technology.
B. Host communities: The towns and regions deciding whether to allow a data centre nearby. They carry the local costs, so they should have a say in how the site gives back.
C. Data centre builders: The companies and public bodies that need approvals and climate claims that survive scrutiny.
D. AI coalitions: Groups of AI companies and funders who wish to give back to communities, and who gain from the trust that comes with it.
Customer Problems
A. A poor bargain (host communities): Hosts carry the noise, water use and pressure on power supplies, but rarely share the benefits or choose how any offsetting is done.
B. Unprovable claims (builders): Builders find it hard to prove they are clean. Yearly matching and credits bought far away are often doubted.
C. No access (climate-impacted communities): The communities most affected by climate change often lack the computing power, skills and data for early warning, research and planning.
D. Growth outrunning repayment (everyone): If many sites are built at once, each taking a 20-year carbon loan, the combined debt can outgrow the land and time available to repay it.
E. Nobody owns the whole picture (everyone): Energy, computing, carbon and community are managed by different companies, so no one can say whether the system overall gives back more than it takes.
Solutions
DaisyGrove treats each data centre as a monolith. Everything that crosses its boundary is counted: energy in, tokens out, carbon emitted to build and run it, carbon taken back by its forest, and the share of tokens given away. Over time, the monolith should give back more than it takes. The bargain has six parts, each answering the problems above.
A. Reduce first: Before planting a single tree, cut the debt: clean power matched hour by hour, efficient cooling, hardware kept longer, lower-carbon steel and cement, and server heat reused for homes or greenhouses.
B. Plant before you construct: The forest is planted before or alongside the building, sized to repay the site's carbon within 20 years, and paid for upfront, including decades of care.
C. Let the community choose: Forests grow within a set distance of the site, on land the community chooses and agrees to, using native species, without taking land that grows food, and with land rights staying with the community.
D. Give a tenth: A share of the site's computing goes to work that does good for humanity. 10 percent is only an example; the right share is open for debate. Uses include, but are not limited to, research on cutting emissions; early warning for floods, fires and storms; monitoring glaciers, forests and coastlines; and practical help for communities affected by melting glaciers, climate-linked disasters and rising seas. Affected communities help decide how it is used, get support to use it, and see the results published.
E. Grow at a pace: A site can only grow as fast as its forest can repay. Unpaid carbon divided by what the forest absorbs each year should stay at 20 years or less, and fall every year. New capacity is added in stages, once the previous stage meets the rule. In return, sites that keep the bargain should find communities more willing to say yes.
F. Show the books: Every site publishes an open ledger of power used, tokens made, carbon emitted, trees planted and carbon measured, checked by an independent verifier.
Outcome
A. What DaisyGrove delivers: A data centre that follows this bargain repays its own construction carbon with a nearby forest within 20 years. Compared with a typical build, it avoids about 1.25 million tonnes of CO2 for every 10 MW of computers. It also gives a tenth of its computing to the communities most affected by climate change. The numbers below show how this works for one example site.
B. The carbon debt: Take a data centre with 10 MW of computers (about 12 MW with cooling), its hardware replaced every 5 years over 20 years, and its own wind, solar and batteries. Building all of that adds up to about 185,000 tonnes of CO2, about what 40,000 cars emit in a year.
C. The forest that repays it: A temperate forest regrowing naturally absorbs about 11.5 tonnes of CO2 per hectare each year. At that rate, repaying the debt in 20 years takes about 805 hectares: about 8 square kilometres, or about two Stanley Parks. In the tropics it would take about 540 hectares, and in a cold northern forest about 1,570. Repaying in 10 years would take about 1,600 hectares. Growth rates vary more than a hundred-fold around the world and slow as forests age, so measured uptake, not this estimate, decides when the debt is paid.
D. The tenth: The 10 MW site uses about 105 GWh of electricity a year. A tenth of that could answer about 44 billion everyday AI prompts a year, enough for about 4 million people asking 30 questions a day. Research tasks use more energy each, so this shows scale, not a forecast.
E. The saving at one site: A typical build with 10 MW of computers emits about 58,500 tonnes of CO2 a year, about 1.25 million tonnes over 20 years including construction. The DaisyGrove site avoids that, and its own build debt equals about three years of that saving. That is about 1.25 million tonnes less CO2 per 10 MW of computers, and about 8.1 million tonnes less per typical 100 MW site. This counts emissions avoided, not carbon removed. The build debt stays in the air until the trees absorb it, which is why the forest is still needed.
F. The saving worldwide: If every data centre followed this path from 2026 to 2045, about 5.5 billion tonnes of CO2 would be avoided. That is an upper bound, since it assumes every data centre follows it. At 10 percent adoption, it would be about 0.55 billion tonnes.
G. What that means for temperature: 5.5 billion tonnes is about 0.0025 degrees C of warming avoided. That sounds tiny, but it is about 4 percent of the world's remaining 1.5 degrees C budget, or about a month and a half of the world's current CO2 emissions. DaisyGrove does not tackle the extra fossil fuel that AI may help produce, so that part of the 4 to 36 percent share needs separate action.
H. What it means for people: Host communities get a forest they chose, and a say. Builders get faster approvals and claims that survive scrutiny. Communities hit hardest by climate change get computing for early warning, research and recovery.
