Data Sheet 1_Beyond the AI energy hype? data-center-related establishment growth, electricity demand, and emissions across U.S. states.csv

This study examines whether the expansion of data-center-related activity is associated with measurable changes in aggregate electricity demand and power-sector emissions across 50 U.S. states from 2010 to 2023.

Using a balanced state-level panel and two-way fixed-effects models, data-center expansion is proxied by annual establishment counts, with population-normalized exposure and several alternative specifications used for robustness. The baseline estimates provide no evidence of a positive within-state association between growth in data-center-related establishments and aggregate electricity demand. This finding remains robust to alternative functional forms, population weighting, state-specific trends, lagged exposure, controls for grid investment and population, exclusion of major data-center states, winsorization, and first-difference estimation.