Data Center Myths
Imagine a data center is coming to your town. What’s your first reaction? Where do I go to protest? My reaction would be, “Please put it in my backyard!”
And here’s why – this is the one and only chance to negotiate with the data center builder to get WHATEVER YOU WANT! Does your town need a new firehouse, a new school, lower taxes? All of the above and more? Put the offer on the table and let the gifts rain down!
But, you’ll have people in your town, far left activists who know nothing about data centers, protesting to the heavens. “They’ll contaminate and steal all the water, the noise will make us all go crazy, the electric company will increase our energy bills by 200%.” Nope, well, maybe! The only people you should be protesting are your local politicians or local negotiations team working with the data center builder. Get in their face and get everything you can get.
If you don’t invite the data center into your town, you’re losing out. That data center is going somewhere, if they can’t put it in your town, they’ll find a town to take it, and they’re awash in money. They’re picking your town for a reason, so get everything you can get. Here’s how you should approach it:
Water. Try to understand if the data center is going to be built with a self-contained/closed-loop water system or evaporative system. Evaporative systems use roughly 17 billion gallons for direct water use. To include indirect water used by the power grid to generate electricity it jumps up to just over 200 billion gallons. Your local golf course uses over 500 billion gallons for irrigation. If you have a local farm, they use even more. Agriculture uses roughly 1000 times more water than all the data centers consume nationwide.
“The data center is going to contaminate my well and all other water sources around it!” Maybe, but during construction not during operation. Get clarification from the builder, “What happens with the waste water during construction?” Also, get your water tested before construction, so that if it does come to a lawsuit or claim, you’ll have a baseline for your arguments and claims.
“My electric bill will soar 200%!”. Maybe. But to clarify, the largest increase in costs when a data center is consuming electricity are wholesale prices, which in turn trickle down to the household consumer. Consumption from data centers can be attributed to increased costs, but so too does plant retirement, equipment cost increases, distribution cost increases, and, of course, government regulations from climate concerns.
Get comfortable with the term “large load tariffs.” States are trying to address the costs of new large load customers, like data centers. The cost of building new infrastructure to serve the new large load, can sometimes be passed on to consumers. But that’s where negotiation plays another big role. Make sure the large load tariff is applied solely to the large load consumer and not trickled down to the ordinary rate payer.
“The pollution to the environment will be unbearable!” Negotiation! Data center cooling and backup generators operate at a different frequency, or dBA, than ordinary neighborhood ordinances. Because they’re measured differently they can get away with a constant hum or louder because your local ordinance isn’t written to protect neighborhoods from different decibels or dBA. Ensure your town puts protections in place to protect against violations of low-frequency sound. Noise pollution isn’t the only thing you need to negotiate though, backup generators can emit large amounts of diesel particulates in the air. Some data centers will also create their own electricity, not just backup electricity, which brings in a whole new emissions profile that will need to be addressed at the negotiations table. Ensure they use Tier-4 backup generators. Ask if they’ll be including primary power generation now or in the future, and what solution does that look like – what protections can be guaranteed in terms of noise ordinances and emissions profiles?
“They get enormous tax breaks for coming to my town!” Don’t let them! Data centers will argue they’re bringing in thousands of new jobs as a selling point for negotiating away large tax burdens, sometimes decades of tax abatements. But the construction jobs go away after a temporary period of time, and the operational jobs in the data center are typically highly skilled jobs and far fewer. Again, negotiate – some communities have negotiated property tax incentives for the town that the data center will pay on behalf of the taxpayer, some households in data center towns won’t have to pay property taxes for ten years.
It all comes down to the negotiations. Consideration for noise, pollution, water, taxes, jobs, as well as many other factors should be disclosed prior to breaking ground. Your local politicians are the primary responsible entity for ensuring your town negotiates protections and benefits before construction begins. Say yes to data centers! But make sure your activism is pointed in the right direction. Call before they dig!
