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Americans are angry about data centers. Politicians are feeling the pressure

reuters.com

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Re: Americans are angry about data centers. Politicians are feeling the pressure

#21

Post by mukbangpervert »

wahern wrote: post #11
fleventynine wrote: post #6

I think there's room for win-win solutions here; the cost of placating the locals is a rounding error compared to the cost of these data centers. 1. Local governments can require that if the data center peak load is 1.0GW, they must provision transmission and generation capacity for the local region of 1.2GW; the extra power can be given to the neighbors at substantial discount. 2. Construct a public swimming complex…

[flagged]

It's inaccurate to claim that the opposition is "completely irrational".

One _extremely_ rational and common reason that people oppose these projects is that they can bid-up the energy cost in their regions, meaning that one of the residents biggest monthly bills gets bigger.

A second one goes around pollution and noise, particularly when the AI DataCenter is using "portable" gas turbines or similar.

Solutions are hard, but possible... so long as the decision makers are able to recognize that much of the opposition is quite rational, and that the deals struck need to accommodate the legitimate and rational concerns, while avoiding getting hung up by true nonsense.

Re: Americans are angry about data centers. Politicians are feeling the pressure

#22

Post by Sabinus »

jerrythegerbil wrote: post #8
lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #5

[flagged]

A datacenter was built a couple hundred feet from my apartment complex around 2013-2014. Absolutely none of your comment would have even remotely held true at the time, and my family moved away as a direct result. Assuming positive intent, what’s different nowadays that makes it all different? It would actually make me pretty happy to hear about the incredible leaps and bounds that’ve been taken.

What did the nearby datacentre do that made you move?

Re: Americans are angry about data centers. Politicians are feeling the pressure

#23

Post by SoftTalker »

onaclov2000 wrote: post #16
m0llusk wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar to the trajectory of nuclear power which lost public approval for reasons that are not entirely rational.

I have been half wondering if it gets bad enough will people be willing to support nuclear power again.

Gen Alpha or whatever the latest rising adults are called might. They are too young to remember any of the disasters

Re: Americans are angry about data centers. Politicians are feeling the pressure

#24

Post by seanmcdirmid »

mukbangpervert wrote: post #21
wahern wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It's inaccurate to claim that the opposition is "completely irrational". One _extremely_ rational and common reason that people oppose these projects is that they can bid-up the energy cost in their regions, meaning that one of the residents biggest monthly bills gets bigger. A second one goes around pollution and noise, particularly when the AI DataCenter is using "portable" gas turbines or similar. Solutions are ha…

In theory, rising energy prices would encourage more investment in capacity increases, that would then real a new equilibrium and so on. In theory of course, energy markets are so distorted now who knows. Having AI data centers bring their own power or power investments is probably going to be necessary.

Re: Americans are angry about data centers. Politicians are feeling the pressure

#25

Post by ninkendo »

consensus1 wrote: post #17
jmclnx wrote: post #12

All the data centers do is: 1. use all the water 2. Increase electric costs but a large amount 3. Increase noise in the neighborhood If the above was false, no one would care. Plus these data centers provides almost no jobs, so there is no benefit to the community. Granted there is more tax revenue, but the people paying taxes do not see their tax burden go down. So the wonder why ??

All of the above are false, except for 3 which has actually happened in a few cases, though is definitely the outlier as I have been near data centers and couldn't hear a thing. And they provide a lot more jobs than the 0 jobs that were provided by the undeveloped land they are built on.

I wonder what fallacy you’re going to use to justify GPU-heavy data centers using zero water: are you going to take the “they’re closed loop” path, and conveniently ignore that they need to be continually topped off, and that effectively makes them open loop anyway (or that they heat exchange with a separate loop that is evaporated?) Or maybe you’ll just say “sure the water evaporates, but it’ll rain down somewhere so it’s still zero” ignoring that the water is taken from a place it’s needed (a municipality) to a place it’s not (the ocean)? Or maybe you’ll point to some extremely rare designs that don’t continually consume water, and pretend they’re representative of all of them (when the number of truly closed loop data centers effectively rounds to zero.)

I eagerly await your response.

Re: Americans are angry about data centers. Politicians are feeling the pressure

#26

Post by happyopossum »

nfRfqX5n wrote: post #9
lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #5

[flagged]

our energy bills went up 30% YOY and we are nowhere near a data center. It’s easy to see why people don’t like this

-> and we are nowhere near a data center.

Please square that with a rational argument against data centers then?

Re: Americans are angry about data centers. Politicians are feeling the pressure

#27

Post by adriand »

fleventynine wrote: post #6

I think there's room for win-win solutions here; the cost of placating the locals is a rounding error compared to the cost of these data centers. 1. Local governments can require that if the data center peak load is 1.0GW, they must provision transmission and generation capacity for the local region of 1.2GW; the extra power can be given to the neighbors at substantial discount. 2. Construct a public swimming complex…

None of these mitigations (although they’re good ideas) address what I think is the real issue here, which is that people don’t like AI. And why would they, when the dish being served by AI CEOs is job loss with a side of extinction risk.

I think many data centre opponents understand that being opposed to AI is not sufficient to halt a local project, so it is noise, water use and power consumption that they latch onto - although, in jurisdictions without plentiful water and clean power, those two reasons are quite valid.

In my own local community, there’s vocal opposition to a proposed data centre that is next to Lake Ontario, 500 metres from the nearest residential neighbourhood, on a brownfield site with 500 megawatts of clean power capacity. None of that makes a difference to those opposed.

Re: Americans are angry about data centers. Politicians are feeling the pressure

#28

Post by JimsonYang »

I mean Michigan really loves it when something gives jobs, so as long as the data center actually enacts on it then I suspect opposition will go away

That said, we've seen data center projects often employ much less jobs than expected. I know Core Scientific when they did a data center in like Texas they employed like 10 people not 200

Re: Americans are angry about data centers. Politicians are feeling the pressure

#29

Post by consensus1 »

mukbangpervert wrote: post #21
wahern wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It's inaccurate to claim that the opposition is "completely irrational". One _extremely_ rational and common reason that people oppose these projects is that they can bid-up the energy cost in their regions, meaning that one of the residents biggest monthly bills gets bigger. A second one goes around pollution and noise, particularly when the AI DataCenter is using "portable" gas turbines or similar. Solutions are ha…

Residential electricity rates don't get "bid up" like that. Increases typically must be approved by the government and have to be justified by expenses rather than market prices. Ashburn VA, which has more data centers than anywhere else, actually pays below US average rates.

Re: Americans are angry about data centers. Politicians are feeling the pressure

#30

Post by annzabelle »

wahern wrote: post #11
fleventynine wrote: post #6

I think there's room for win-win solutions here; the cost of placating the locals is a rounding error compared to the cost of these data centers. 1. Local governments can require that if the data center peak load is 1.0GW, they must provision transmission and generation capacity for the local region of 1.2GW; the extra power can be given to the neighbors at substantial discount. 2. Construct a public swimming complex…

[flagged]

I grew up right by Ashburn, Virginia, which has the largest concentration of hyperscale data centers in the world. I rarely heard of organized opposition to them until they became a politically charged issue and associated with white collar layoffs.

I never once noticed significant noise from any of them - they are nearly all on the opposite side of a wide road from the nearest housing, and the road is louder than the data center. There is enough electric supply in the region that they almost never run the gas turbine generators.

As a way of growing the industrial tax base of an area, they are one of the least dirty ways to use industrially zoned land, though they don't produce as many long term jobs. There is a big data center construction and design industry in that region, and it did pull Amazon to open HQ2 nearby, but those are both first mover effects.

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