{"id":5830,"date":"2026-07-17T22:49:05","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T22:49:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2026\/07\/17\/michigan-futures-initiative-to-launch-pilot-project-on-sustainable-ai-data-centers\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T22:49:07","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T22:49:07","slug":"michigan-futures-initiative-to-launch-pilot-project-on-sustainable-ai-data-centers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2026\/07\/17\/michigan-futures-initiative-to-launch-pilot-project-on-sustainable-ai-data-centers\/","title":{"rendered":"Michigan Futures Initiative to launch pilot project on sustainable AI data centers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The <a href=\"https:\/\/mfi.umich.edu\/\">Michigan Futures Initiative<\/a> \u2014 a University of Michigan interdisciplinary research initiative \u2014 recently launched its <a href=\"https:\/\/mfi.umich.edu\/pilot\/\">pilot project<\/a>, researching ways to create ethical and sustainable artificial intelligence and data centers. The project\u2019s team hopes to announce its findings this fall.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">MFI aims to connect U-M scholars and experts across a variety of fields with communities impacted by climate and sustainability issues. In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Anjuli Jain Figueroa, assistant vice provost for sustainability and climate action, said the goal of MFI is to provide a platform for collaborative research to produce a range of interdisciplinary climate solutions.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe want to use interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary research to catalyze solution-based action for climate,\u201d Jain Figueroa said. \u201c(MFI) is a way to help the research enterprise move in the direction of scaling and measuring impact, accelerating impact, emphasizing solutions to real-world problems \u2014 specifically those that are caused by climate change \u2026 When you pull out one string of the environment, you see that it\u2019s connected to everything else\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Jain Figueroa also said MFI chose AI-related data centers as the focus of its pilot project due to the <a href=\"https:\/\/hai.stanford.edu\/ai-index\/2025-ai-index-report\">rapidly evolving<\/a> nature of the technology.\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-1    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe reason, partly, was because of its moment in time,\u201d Jain Figueroa said. \u201cWe are facing it right now in real time \u2026 it\u2019s an opportune timing to intervene before too many things are set in a direction that maybe is not in alignment with sustainability.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As the University plans to construct a $1.25 billion <a href=\"https:\/\/www.michigandaily.com\/news\/administration\/top-umich-officials-sit-down-with-the-daily-to-discuss-planned-ypsi-data-center\/\">data center<\/a> with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lanl.gov\/engage\/collaboration\/about-sparc\">Los Alamos National Laboratory<\/a> in Ypsilanti, community members continue to raise <a href=\"https:\/\/www.michigandaily.com\/news\/administration\/umich-held-a-data-center-open-house-in-ypsilanti-township-many-residents-still-arent-satisfied\/\">concerns<\/a> regarding transparency and potential negative environmental impact. In an interview with The Daily, LSA rising junior Will McKanna, co-president of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.maisi.club\/\">Michigan AI Safety Initiative<\/a>, said while MFI\u2019s message appears encouraging, he believes the initiative\u2019s progress will be dependent on public trust.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe have a lot of the world\u2019s leading data scientists, computer engineers (and) people who can make these changes that we want to see in this world, but I don\u2019t think that can go anywhere in the court of public opinion unless real change is made to be transparent,\u201d McKanna said. \u201cOne of the things I\u2019m looking for is transparency \u2014 building trust, taking feedback from students, from new grads (and) from the people in these communities.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A primary climate <a href=\"https:\/\/stpp.fordschool.umich.edu\/sites\/stpp\/files\/2025-07\/stpp-data-centers-2025.pdf\">concern<\/a> surrounding the construction of data centers is the amount of energy the facilities use for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cleanegroup.org\/data-center-development\/\">computing<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.parkplacetechnologies.com\/blog\/environmental-impact-data-centers\/#usage\">regulative<\/a> needs. In an interview with The Daily, Michael Craig, associate professor of environment and sustainability, said achieving efficient and sustainable data centers would be reliant upon the use of renewable energy sources.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhen it comes to energy, the main things that you care about are (making) the data centers use more electricity from wind and solar and batteries, and use less electricity from natural gas and coal,\u201d Craig said. \u201cThen you can improve efficiency so they consume less electricity overall.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-2    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Despite the challenges surrounding AI usage and data center construction, McKanna said he believes positive environmental change is achievable in a short period of time, and praised the University\u2019s choice to fund climate research amid broader funding <a href=\"https:\/\/specials.michigandaily.com\/2025\/grant-terminations\/\">cuts<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhen people recognize an existential threat \u2014 and people are sufficiently involved in overcoming that obstacle \u2014 real things can happen in a truncated period of time,\u201d McKanna said. \u201cI think it\u2019s great that (the University) is funding research, especially in a time period where a lot of funding for research programs have been cut.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Daily Staff Reporter Micayla Horwitz can be reached at <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.michigandaily.com\/news\/research\/michigan-futures-initiative-to-launch-pilot-project-on-sustainable-ai-data-centers\/mailto:hmicayla@umich.edu\"><em>hmicayla@umich.edu<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<aside>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p><h3 class=\"jp-relatedposts-headline\"><em>Related articles<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Michigan Futures Initiative \u2014 a University of Michigan interdisciplinary research initiative \u2014 recently launched its pilot project, researching ways to create ethical and sustainable artificial intelligence and data centers. The project\u2019s team hopes to announce its findings this fall. MFI aims to connect U-M scholars and experts across a variety of fields with communities [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5831,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[5142,3508,1722,5141,1857,222,4531,856,291],"class_list":["post-5830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-centers","tag-data","tag-futures","tag-initiative","tag-launch","tag-michigan","tag-pilot","tag-project","tag-sustainable"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5830"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5830\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5832,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5830\/revisions\/5832"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}