alt Hacker NewsOne dairy operation uses more resources than all the datacenters in the united states
People are way too preocupied with data centers because they don't really have to give anything up. They can complain, on the internet, about how bad the internet is.
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> One dairy operation uses more resources than all the datacenters in the united states
citation for this claim?
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/10/24/what-we-k...
> U.S. data centers consumed 183 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity in 2024, according to IEA estimates. That works out to more than 4% of the country’s total electricity consumption last year – and is roughly equivalent to the annual electricity demand of the entire nation of Pakistan. By 2030, this figure is projected to grow by 133% to 426 TWh.
lol what? Can you please cite some sources for this claim?
> U.S. data centers consumed 183 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity in 2024, according to IEA estimates. That works out to more than 4% of the country’s total electricity consumption last year – and is roughly equivalent to the annual electricity demand of the entire nation of Pakistan. By 2030, this figure is projected to grow by 133% to 426 TWh.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/10/24/what-we-k...
There are ~10M cows nationally. The average energy consumption is ~1000 kWh/cow annually. Summing up, the entire dairy industry consumes ~10TWh. That is less than 10% of the national data center energy burn. [edit: was off by a factor of 10]