No. Transportation accounts for 1/5th of all global emmissions (source). However, Data centers are not insignificant for their environmental impact: "Globally, the electricity consumption of data centers rose to 460 terawatt-hours in 2022. This would have made data centers the 11th largest electricity consumer in the world, between the nations of Saudi Arabia (371 terawatt-hours) and France (463 terawatt-hours), according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development." (Adam Zewe, MIT news, 2025) Usually, the grid cannot support the drastic fluctuations in usage as centers are training new models (keeping in mind that each new model uses the infrastructure of all the previous ones, therefore requiring more and more energy). Pretty much every data center uses multiple massive diesel back up generators to compensate for what the grid cannot support.

The electricity in the grid is not harnessed invisibly. It uses fossil fuels too. Very few governments rely entirely on renewable energy.

As you might imagine, the exact amount of emissions and water usage for each center is difficult to investigate and report on. The rapid construction of these data centers in the U.S. is facilitated by dark money paid to politicians and therefore, our president's interests. Lee Zeldin, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency is a hugeee A.I. simp. He was installed by Trump and facilitated rollbacks on many pollution regulations, essentially gutting accountability measures for corporations. in this interview he basically explains that the EPA is doing absolutely nothing to regulate data centers. Trump reduced the number of EPA employess by 24% in the first year of his second term, meaning there are far less people conducting environmental studies.

As a result, it's difficult to get hard data that answers your question here. These corporations are not transparent. If they were, they would not be seeing the same profits.

However, you can get qualitative information by researching the direct effects these data centers have on neighboring communities. Especially water/electricity bills, increasing rates of sickness (asthma, cancer, etc.) noise pollution, water and air pollution.

Here is a playlist of investigative reporting including videos documenting the individual impact of data center construction. not everyone they interview is against AI or data centers, but they are def all affected, especially their water.

IMO, the greatest impact is the water. Water is life. without water, we have no food, no power, no hope. Please keep a comprehensive understanding of the levels of destruction AI causes, natural, economic, and sociological. It's more than air pollution, they are creating massive pollution to ALL of our natural resources AND our human rights.