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

http://www.ft.com/content/8252d574-ae2a-4403-9cf9-031295ba67f5

29•1vuio0pswjnm7•43m ago

Comments

kerhackernews•24m ago

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.

nxm•10m ago

That includes nuclear power, correct?

sschueller•3m ago

Exactly

Here in Switzerland new AI datacenters are also causing some uproar but a lot less because regulations are rigid enough in most places that you can only build them if you do so cleanly. You can't just take all the water, electricity, make noise and polute.

I live next to a waste valorisation plant and they have very over sized water cooling systems because they need to keep the noise below regulation. They also for example have under pressure in the trash receiving bunker to prevent smells from escaping. All regulations that cost money but are the benefit of all.

tolugenius•17m ago

Archive link: http://archive.today/0Rxl7

neko_ranger•11m ago

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.

jrflo•7m ago

They already do, indirectly. The local government gets property taxes from these data centers. But maybe it would be more real for people if you just wrote them a check I guess.

Yhippa•2m ago

New rev source = spend more as opposed to reduce taxpayer burden?

Zigurd•8m ago

There's lots of AI capex that is low risk. If it ends up being under utilized companies like Amazon and Google will adjust their capex plans. When they say things like under spending is riskier than overspending, for them, that's plausible.

But the sketchiest part of the bubble is when you directly bolt a no name data center company to Nvidia's cash pile, and you start turning cash into ever-lengthening receivables collection time, that's why people are skeptical of data centers: even if they can't tell a Google data center from a pivoting crypto bros data center, they smell the bullshit.

People also know they are being lied to, Oracle claims their New Mexico data center will run on Bloom fuel cells. I doubt Bloom is ready to scale to data center size without proof of concept in different applications at large if not directly comparable scale.