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'People are going to get screwed' Pennsylvania voters unite against data centres

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Re: 'People are going to get screwed' Pennsylvania voters unite against data centres

#61

Post by nemomarx »

peterldowns wrote: post #18

As a Pennsylvanian I think this is idiotic and I completely blame the press, who have breathlesslly amplified baseless negative claims. Such as that datacenters are somehow bad for the environment, have negative impacts on water supply, will raise energy and water rates for residential customers, etc. I HATE that this is somehow becoming a culture war issue.

I remember the fracking roll out here. The companies involved directly handed checks to local residents, promised to train locals for new jobs, paid to fund schools, and so on.

These companies have a lot of money behind them - if they're not willing to put in the effort to convince local residents that the data center will be good for them, I feel like that's on them. They could easily do some handouts and fix this. Offer to pay extra taxes to the state or whatever, fund a new power plant, pay everyone who lives nearby the DC some thousands of dollars, whatever.

Re: 'People are going to get screwed' Pennsylvania voters unite against data centres

#63

Post by estearum »

slibhb wrote: post #48
kerhackernews wrote: post #2

Really the main issue causing the data center backlash is because they aren't building new 100% green energy production capacity with it. When you drop a data center into an area, energy prices will spike. Additionally, without that green energy capacity they will cause much more air pollution.

That's not the main issue at all . I'm baffled where you got that idea. Also, I live in Northern Virginia where we have tons of data centers, and energy prices have not spiked.

Northern Virginia has tons of data centers because it had massive amounts of excess energy capacity.

That is now being consumed and now Loudon County will also start engaging in electricity price wars with data centers. New regulations to segregate markets is supposed to kick in on Jan 1 2027, in fact.

Re: 'People are going to get screwed' Pennsylvania voters unite against data centres

#64

Post by slowmovintarget »

kerhackernews wrote: post #2

Really the main issue causing the data center backlash is because they aren't building new 100% green energy production capacity with it. When you drop a data center into an area, energy prices will spike. Additionally, without that green energy capacity they will cause much more air pollution.

So not the massive Chinese bot farm (200K +) launching anti-datacenter propaganda campaigns? It's just the green energy concern? ("Spiking local prices" was one of the propaganda talking points.)

These new AI data centers are now built with their own power generation capacity. They're too electricity hungry to be supplied by the local grid, requiring megawatts to gigawatts of generation. If they're grid-connected at all (for training / inference racks + cooling) it is secondary supplementation.

There is a concerted effort by foreign governments to slow down American progress in fielding AI capability. Attempts to generate civil unrest and propaganda against $new_thing are included in this.

Re: 'People are going to get screwed' Pennsylvania voters unite against data centres

#65

Post by blooalien »

lisp2240 wrote: post #24
kerhackernews wrote: post #2

Really the main issue causing the data center backlash is because they aren't building new 100% green energy production capacity with it. When you drop a data center into an area, energy prices will spike. Additionally, without that green energy capacity they will cause much more air pollution.

Even worse some data centers have been caught running on diesel generators even in places where that is illegal. People are sick of tech companies bribing their way out of any accountability.

> Even worse some data centers have been caught running on diesel generators even in places where that is illegal.

Yeah, Elon's a big fan of this tactic.

Re: 'People are going to get screwed' Pennsylvania voters unite against data centres

#66

Post by estearum »

neko_ranger wrote: post #6

Residents of the state should get money for needing to live next to data centers and the use of their land/natural resources/etc, similar to the Alaska Permanent Fund.

You can just do this for everything everywhere with near-zero enforcement complexity by instituting a high Land Value Tax

Re: 'People are going to get screwed' Pennsylvania voters unite against data centres

#67

Post by blooalien »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #59
kerhackernews wrote: post #2

Really the main issue causing the data center backlash is because they aren't building new 100% green energy production capacity with it. When you drop a data center into an area, energy prices will spike. Additionally, without that green energy capacity they will cause much more air pollution.

Just a man on the street here—I sense it's more a backlash against tech-bros in general. People are seeing the world getting worse from tech and they're taking their pitchforks to the data centers and Flock cameras. (Of course I might simply be projecting.)

> I sense it's more a backlash against tech-bros in general.

I can almost guarantee there's a good bit of that also involved in addition to all the other concerns and issues folks also rightly have.

Re: 'People are going to get screwed' Pennsylvania voters unite against data centres

#68

Post by catlikesshrimp »

WarmWash wrote: post #42
peterldowns wrote: post #18

As a Pennsylvanian I think this is idiotic and I completely blame the press, who have breathlesslly amplified baseless negative claims. Such as that datacenters are somehow bad for the environment, have negative impacts on water supply, will raise energy and water rates for residential customers, etc. I HATE that this is somehow becoming a culture war issue.

The older I get the more and more convinced I become that the media is the actual real enemy of the country. Their lifeblood is creating controversy and drama about everything so they can show ads. So insane that so few call them out (probably because most people are already "captured" by them).

Dictatorships abolish all free press, they don't like it. There was a quote where I live "Free press dies along democracy" and it did.

Re: 'People are going to get screwed' Pennsylvania voters unite against data centres

#69

Post by rconti »

slibhb wrote: post #48
kerhackernews wrote: post #2

Really the main issue causing the data center backlash is because they aren't building new 100% green energy production capacity with it. When you drop a data center into an area, energy prices will spike. Additionally, without that green energy capacity they will cause much more air pollution.

That's not the main issue at all . I'm baffled where you got that idea. Also, I live in Northern Virginia where we have tons of data centers, and energy prices have not spiked.

Wow, you have insanely, enviably cheap power.

But also, it seems to have increased in price quite a bit lately.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APUS35A72610

Re: 'People are going to get screwed' Pennsylvania voters unite against data centres

#70

Post by maxerickson »

estearum wrote: post #51
lordgilman wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect the authors of this paper would like to hear out your evidence for increasing energy prices https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.19777 In the United States at least there's been plenty of polling on why people oppose data centers. Consistently, it's water usage and water contamination fears, which is exactly what you see most often in social media and discussed online. I think a lot of high-minded rationalizations ar…

2015 to 2024...? Monthly private spending on data center construction: 2015: $168 million 2024: $1.59 billion 10x increase over 9 years (26% annual growth rate) 2026: $4.36 billion 3x increase over 2 years (73% annual growth rate) Let me reiterate: MONTHLY spending. Compound this with presumably we've gotten better and not worse at building data centers (if nothing else, just building larger data centers would create…

You misunderstood I think. They aren't arguing water is a bigger problem than energy. They are arguing that negative perception is mostly focused around water use.
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