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U.S. gov't moves to suppress pushback on data centers

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Re: U.S. gov't moves to suppress pushback on data centers

#91

Post by expedition32 »

plasticchris wrote: post #21
oefrha wrote: post #11

What I don’t understand is that the vast majority of LLM workloads are pretty damn latency-insensitive. Why can’t they build these data centers where there’s little to no opposition? Sure someone will need to maintain the data centers, but with trillions in investment lined up, surely they can just pay people enough so they’re okay with living in the middle of nowhere. Edit: When I say the middle of nowhere I mean sa…

Because they need the local infrastructure to support them, which would be difficult and expensive to reproduce out in the middle of nowhere.

Americans believe in the free market but it was the feds who in the 1930s rolled out electricity to every little house on the prairie.

Re: U.S. gov't moves to suppress pushback on data centers

#92

Post by randusername »

How naive I was to hope that the strain data centers will place on the electric grid would spur very big, very public investment in renewable energy and nuclear.

Somebody has to realize that gas turbines are backordered to the 2030s meanwhile the ROI on solar is getting impossible to ignore.

Re: U.S. gov't moves to suppress pushback on data centers

#93

Post by pjc50 »

randusername wrote: post #92

How naive I was to hope that the strain data centers will place on the electric grid would spur very big, very public investment in renewable energy and nuclear. Somebody has to realize that gas turbines are backordered to the 2030s meanwhile the ROI on solar is getting impossible to ignore.

It might "spur" through higher prices, since electricity is basically a private concern is (most? All?) of the US and many Western countries. Of course the general public hates this inflation and hence the cause.

The only fair and workable solution is to make the data center investors pay for the grid upgrade before the data center is turned on. They can wait a decade for nuclear reactors, right?

Re: U.S. gov't moves to suppress pushback on data centers

#94

Post by hvb2 »

detourdog wrote: post #62
cmiles8 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory yes. In practice if the local congressman wants to keep their job they’ll block it at any cost if there’s local opposition.

I watched Massachusetts fail at this opposition about a decade ago. Courts sided with the feds. https://ferc.gov/ https://nofrackedgasinmass.com/massachusetts-pipelines/

> Courts sided with the feds.

After how many years of making it through the court system? Because 5 years of delay all but guarantees that the potential builder is no longer interested.

Re: U.S. gov't moves to suppress pushback on data centers

#96

Post by dynm »

docdeek wrote: post #12
vintagedave wrote: post #2

> The latest proposal applies to permits for a "minor source" of air pollution ... [the Vantage data center was estimated to contribute] between $53 million and $99 million in annual health damages, the largest estimate for any single facility ever. 'The largest estimate for any single facility ever.' 'Minor source.' I give you double-speak, gentlefolks of HN. Name it something - anything - and you frame it in those…

FTA: 'The largest estimate for any single facility ever.' From the researcher: 'We estimated between $53 million and $99 million in annual health damages from associated air pollution — among the largest health-damage estimates produced for a single facility to date.' [0] Still enormous, but there is a significant difference between being 'THE X of all time, and being 'among the X of all time'. Regarding 'minor sourc…

I think you're getting a lot of unfair pushback on this, when you're making some excellent points. Just to clarify, I think you're making these points:

- Existing air pollution causes a ton of harm.

- Realistically, the optimal amount of air pollution is probably not zero.

- Logically, we should treat the cost/benefit of adding this "new" air pollution the same as the cost/benefit of removing existing air pollution.

- As an absolute number, the harm caused by this facility is very large, but as a percentage it is tiny.

People seem to be interpreting your conclusion as, "therefore it's completely fine to build this facility because only percentages matter, not absolute numbers." But I think your conclusion is more like, "our society has a complex relationship with air pollution and our existing choices reveal that we are willing to accept some air pollution sometimes, so you have to do a cost/benefit analysis, not just look at costs."

Re: U.S. gov't moves to suppress pushback on data centers

#97

Post by Gormo »

defrost wrote: post #83
Gormo wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm seeing a lot of these sorts of articles talking about things like air pollution, but something seems a bit off, given that, to my knowledge, computers do not produce any emissions at all. The article lumps data centers in with landfills, laundromats, and steel mills. But landfills, laundromats, and steel mills all involve physical waste products that can have chemical or biological effects on the surrounding envi…

There's a surge in data centre building - a massive surge of power hungry hungry hyper scaled hippos. Many local grids are currently unable to meet that demand, therefore various "solutions" so far include: * buying up jet engines from COVID era bankrupted / downsized air fleets and running them continuously in banks along side data centres to spin generators. You'll note these aren't the cleanest solution, are a bit…

So it seems like confirmation that this really is a case of disingenuous conflation of power-generation concerns with data centers per se.

I don't think it's reasonable to regard concerns about emissions from banks of continuously running jet engines as "opposition to data centers" any more than concerns about, using the same jet engines to power charging stations in remote areas would, for example, amount to "opposition to EVs".

Re: U.S. gov't moves to suppress pushback on data centers

#98

Post by 27183 »

Gormo wrote: post #61
vintagedave wrote: post #2

> The latest proposal applies to permits for a "minor source" of air pollution ... [the Vantage data center was estimated to contribute] between $53 million and $99 million in annual health damages, the largest estimate for any single facility ever. 'The largest estimate for any single facility ever.' 'Minor source.' I give you double-speak, gentlefolks of HN. Name it something - anything - and you frame it in those…

I'm seeing a lot of these sorts of articles talking about things like air pollution, but something seems a bit off, given that, to my knowledge, computers do not produce any emissions at all. The article lumps data centers in with landfills, laundromats, and steel mills. But landfills, laundromats, and steel mills all involve physical waste products that can have chemical or biological effects on the surrounding envi…

> What waste products do data centers output?

Energy production consequences aside, they produce tons of e-waste

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