311–320 of 464 posts
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There's this thing called taxes...
That are paid (if not avoided) at the location of the owner, not the location of the dc. Datacenters really aren't that good for the locals. Low property tax, just tens of jobs but very high infrastructure needs.
Was Maine ever at risk of being overrun with data centers? Regardless, if the ban is what Maine voters want then more power to them.
> The bill also creates the Maine Data Center Coordination Council, and instructs the council to provide strategic input, facilitate planning considerations and evaluate policy tools to address data center opportunities.
I don't think a blanket (ban or acceptance) anything is a good approach for this issue.
It's a temporary moratorium (on data centers requiring over 20 megawatts) until 2027 to give them time to research and plan for how to do data centers in an environmentally responsible way
> The bill also creates the Maine Data Center Coordination Council, and instructs the council to provide strategic input, facilitate planning considerations and evaluate policy tools to address data center opportunities.
This seems like smart and thoughtful policy and exactly the kind of stuff we should hope for from our elected officials.
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Where does the water go afterwards? Is it evaporated? Sewer?
I believe evaporative cooling is the norm (thus my "possibly many times that" remark doesn't apply) however theoretically they could provide hot water as a utility or (as you say) just dump it into the sewer. If located next to a river or the ocean they could conceivably dissipate it that way but I'm not aware of any examples. It's the sort of externality that could be solved with a well placed megaproject. A related…
Delved too greedily and too deep learning!
Unlock the FUN
The actual language (I think): https://legislature.maine.gov/legis/bills/getPDF.asp?paper=H... It explains the intent (to protect consumers/grid from price changes and fluctuation), and bans 20MW+ loads. They forgot to define load, so a behind-the-meter datacenter (zero net load on the grid) still would likely not get permitted even though it does not violate the intent of the law, which is a bit odd.
I think the moratorium is a small part of this bill. I think the most important part is the creation of the Maine Data Center Coordination Council.
The title on this very partisan site is quite misleading.
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Sorry, I'm not picking up on the connection - could you expand? Do you think they should also pay for offsets alongside developing energy infrastructure?
I guess what I'm asking is how long it takes, soup-to-nuts, for the 1GW installation to be carbon neutral or better? I've read anywhere from 7 months to 25 years. Maybe its dependent on location?
I guess at a certain point you're getting at a more fundamental question about the value of AI (plus technology and everything else) - what level of environmental tradeoff is acceptable? One thing I slightly lament about the discourse is that tradeoff is widely discussed in the case of AI, but not in the context of stuff we do. I suspect most people aren't aware that the water use associated with eating a burger dwarves a year of ChatGPT, that a long-haul flight wipes out the emissions savings of a couple years' veganism, or that renewables have their own impacts, like the demolition of Chile for copper.
Such a law illustrates the beauty of federalism. Texas and other states can have them if they want them! Maine has not nearly as much space and much more natural beauty to protect [per square mile], so it can and maybe should have a different set of rules. That's cool.
This is a recipe for creating dead retiree states. Just NIMBY everything, NIMBY the power sources[1] [2], then complain about a lack of power so NIMBY any type of new industrial . Now do this for housing, new sources of water anything a person younger than 40 would need and you basically get a state full of retirees..and oh would you look at that! [3]. Now the question is, why wouldn't all states eventually do this w…
Alongside it is a temporary (until Nov 2027) moratorium on data centers over 20 megawatts. This seems to be in place so they could establish a proper legal and environmental framework for building out data centers in the future.
This is exactly the kind of approach to legislation we should all hope our local representatives are competent enough to do.
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Between Austin and San Antonio is so developed that it's considered by many to be a single "metro" area, DFW-style. There's very little not developed directly between the two.
I drove that way in 2024 for the solar eclipse. Some parts of that route struck me as a bit exurb-ish and spread-out, I wouldn't call it a single metro area, but there were definitely people living there. And it was way too green to be called a desert; I've driven through actual deserts in southern CA and nowhere that I saw in that part of Texas was anywhere near that dry (I guess you have to go further west to get t…
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Except that's wrong because greater electricity demand stimulates greater investment and leads to lower prices.
https://www.consumerreports.org/data-centers/ai-data-centers... It seems like that has pretty substantial time lag. Maybe require the ai companies to build power plants before they're allowed to build data centers in a certain region?
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Except that's wrong because greater electricity demand stimulates greater investment and leads to lower prices.
Like how demand for RAM and hard drives drove prices of those down, because of all that greater investment, right?