American citizens and politicians alike have turned on the expansion of data centers in their communities with incredible rapidity. Data centers have gone from curiosities that few paid any attention to, to pariahs blame for ruining the local climate, driving up electric bills, and consuming way too much fresh water.
Every day a new fight springs up on the Facebook group “Say NO to Data Centers,” which has 75,00 followers and climbing. A roundup of the most recent notable anti-data center news includes:
- The Recall: The small town of Festus, Missouri (population: 14,000) immediately recalled four of its eight city council members after they approved a $6 billion data center project, as well as started a petition to remove the remaining city council members and the mayor, according to Politico. The developer is still unidentified, but the project is set to occupy 360 acres of land. Residents filed a lawsuit against the city almost immediately, alleging that Festus didn’t give the public enough time to review the proposal ahead of a decision, and that it made illegal rezoning decisions for the proposal.
- Erin Brockovich gets involved: The legendary environmental activist who brought Pacific gas and electric to its knees for polluting groundwater has now turned her sights on data centers for the exact same reason, ground pollution. She also has her sights set on e-waste, location risks, scalability and efficiency, and energy consumption, all of which can be found on her new site.
- Pennsylvania says, “not so fast:” A few months ago, the state of Pennsylvania launched an aggressive initiative to lure data centers to the state, promoting its energy and natural gas resources as the selling point period now, they’re tapping the brakes, as a coalition of 15 community groups is demanding a three-year moratorium on all new construction. There are three big pieces of legislation under consideration at the state capital: HB 2150, which requires annual public reporting on energy and water consumption with strict penalties for non-compliance; HB 1834, which prohibits utilities from passing data center construction or operational costs onto residents’ energy bills; and HB 2151, which establishes a “model zoning ordinance” to set statewide standards for noise and light pollution. A recent Quinnipiac poll found 68% of Pennsylvania voters oppose having a data center in their community.
- Minnesotans fight Google: A citizens’ group has filed a lawsuit against the City of Hermantown, Minnesota, to block a proposed $1.5 billion Google data center, dubbed “Project Loon.” The group alleges the city violated state law by secretly rezoning 200 acres and holding closed-door meetings with Google representatives. The site will feature up to four buildings on 178 acres of developed space although right now 78% of the land remains privately owned. Opponents cite concerns about water usage for cooling, energy demands, and destruction of rural character.
- Maine does not ban data centers; Maine looked like it was set to be the first state to ban new data centers, but Gov. Janet Mills vetoed a bill that would have banned data centers larger than 20 megawatts until November. In her veto letter to the Legislature, Mills wrote “A moratorium is appropriate given the impacts of massive data centers in other states on the environment and on electricity rates. But the final version of this bill fails to allow for a specific project in the Town of Jay that enjoys strong local support from its host community and region.” The state legislature attempted to override her veto, but failed to get the 2/3 majority needed for the override, with the final tally coming in at 72 for override to 65 opposed.
And finally, two huge projects that are avoiding pushback because they addressed the concerns about data centers.
1) A massive hyperscale data center project in Box Elder County, Utah led by celebrity investor Kevin O’Leary has gained approval. Supporters say will fund modern buildings at Hill Air Force Base while generating all of its own power, cleaning the water it uses so it can be sent to the Great Salt Lake and create 2,000 high-paying jobs in the rural area.
The project will be built on 40,000 acres in unincorporated Box Elder County, where every private landowner has agreed to the use of their land.
Its first phase is expected to require about three gigawatts of power. At full buildout, the campus would reach nine gigawatts, more than double the state’s current four GW of total energy consumption.
However, Paul Morris, executive director of the Military Installation Development Authority (MIDA), which oversees the project, told the Salt Lake Tribune that it has a deal with a natural gas utility that has a pipeline running directly through the land on which the data center will be built to provide all of the power needed.
“One hundred percent of the power will be generated off the Ruby Pipeline,” he said. “It will not take one electron from the grid. In fact, they believe that they’ll eventually have excess power that they’ll be able to put back into the grid.”
2) The Great Wyoming data center: Not to be outdone by its neighbor, Wyoming announced Project Jade, a 1.8-gigawatt data center last August but has since expanded it to 2.7 GW and the designer says in theory it could reach 10 GW. The entire state — one of the least populous in the US — uses less than 1 GW of power total.
Matt Field, chief real estate officer for Crusoe Energy Systems, a co-builder of the center, said their goal is for the data center to bring all of its own power, so that it doesn’t affect local utility rates.
“We’re colloquially viewing it as BYOP,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “Bring your own power. So, we’re bringing our own power. We’re not trying to get the physical infrastructure that’s here to bring us power,
As for water, the data center will usea closed loop system to cool its equipment. Project plans show five buildings of up to 800,000 square feet but Field said the initial water fill will be equivalent to the consumption of 20 households After that, water use for one year on an ongoing annual basis will be equivalent to less than three households.
“So, you really don’t add water to this,” he told the paper. “You fill it once. The water impact is so much less than it used to be. And part of this is we’re actually bringing the water to the chips. We’re not just pushing air across things anymore.”