Meta’s data center campus, one of several major tech developments in the area. And now, the buildup of energy-intensive, AI-processing hyperscale data centers threatens to outpace the energy transition, while giving fossil fuel-boosters justification for continuing to rely on dirty energy sources. Perhaps that data center happens to be a grid-connected facility in, say, the Phoenix metro area, where hyperscale data centers are sprouting like cheatgrass. The facility’s GPUs and CPUs run off electricity funneled in from transmission lines that connect to power plants spread across the utility’s entire grid. Meanwhile, the organisms decomposed in an oxygen-free environment, eventually transforming into crude oil and methane, or natural gas.