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Data center projects blocked or delayed amid local opposition
- jeffbee 1y agoThe parade of misleading and exaggerated hit pieces in the news must be seen as part of the integrated plan to destroy American science, information, and research.
- burningion 1y agoor... maybe there's something to people being skeptical of datacenters? https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/musks-xai-operating-gas-turbines-without-permits-data-center-environmental-group-2024-08-28/ https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/musks-xai-opera... https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/06/elon-musk-xai-memphis-gas-turbines-air-pollution-permits-00317582 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/06/elon-musk-xai-memph... > In just 11 months since the company arrived in Memphis, xAI has become one of Shelby County’s largest emitters of smog-producing nitrogen oxides, according to calculations by environmental groups whose data has been reviewed by POLITICO’s E&E News. The plant is in an area whose air is already considered unhealthy due to smog. Had this set the precedent of working with the community, and _not_ breaking the law, I think we'd be in a better place all around. Similarly, Amazon tried to take the excess nuclear power, without paying back into the electrical grid infrastructure, and got denied in 2024: https://www.utilitydive.com/news/ferc-interconnection-isa-talen-amazon-data-center-susquehanna-exelon/731841/ https://www.utilitydive.com/news/ferc-interconnection-isa-ta... and again in April of 2025: https://www.ans.org/news/2025-04-16/article-6937/ferc-denies-talen-amazon-agreementagain/ https://www.ans.org/news/2025-04-16/article-6937/ferc-denies...
- DocTomoe 1y agoYeah, that politico article conveniently leaves out that the TVA - the local electricity provider - runs a methane-powered gas power plant literally 200 meters down the road (which replaced a much dirtier coal-burning power station at the same location), but somehow could not be bothered actually hooking their neighbours up to the grid.
- sorcerer-mar 1y agoI presume they couldn't be bothered hooking their "neighbors" [0] up because the demand was too great, no...? [0] "Neighbors" here means a datacenter primarily processing data for wealthy people outside of the community and their mega-companies, where the revenue from that processing primarily goes... also to wealthy people outside of the community and their mega-companies... Edit: Ah yes, that is exactly the case [https://memphischamber.com/blog/press-release/xai-phase-one-substation-63-providing-150mw-of-power-to-facility/ https://memphischamber.com/blog/press-release/xai-phase-one-...]. While xAI is fronting the cash, the entire upgrade will ultimately be paid for by taxpayers in the form of monthly rebates.
- DocTomoe 1y agoDatacenters are not things that just randomly appear. There are planning processes, and city stakeholders are involved - which would include the TVA. The fact that they built the thing is a good indication that the stakeholders agreed this project should go forward - and that would involve an agreement on power provisioning. But what I strongly disagree with in the politico article is that the datacenter is framed as a major polluter when the whole area is heavy industry, including a steel works and - a methane-burning power plant. To put the blame now on the xAI site smells a lot like an anti-Musk hit piece. Doesn't mean I like the guy. I just like my journalism honest.
- sorcerer-mar 1y agoI don't really understand the point you're making. It seems like you're suggesting that Politico didn't mention that the area already had pollution problems prior to xAI, but that's literally the very first sentence of the article: > Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company is belching smog-forming pollution into an area of South Memphis that already leads the state in emergency department visits for asthma. It's restated in the 5th sentence: > The plant is in an area whose air is already considered unhealthy due to smog. The power plant down the street is mentioned in the 6th sentence: > The turbines spew nitrogen oxides, also known as NOx, at an estimated rate of 1,200 to 2,000 tons a year — far more than the gas-fired power plant across the street or the oil refinery down the road. So I have to deduce that your actual complaint is that the article didn't say something to the effect of, "xAI is adding a bunch of emissions, but don't worry because the people there were already well-abused by other nearby emission sources?" > what I strongly disagree with in the politico article is that the datacenter is framed as a major polluter when the whole area is heavy industry, The xAI data center is a major polluter. In fact it's a major polluter even in an area full of major polluters! It produces more NOx than the gigantic power plant that powers the region.
- paulryanrogers 1y agoThis seems like a pretty objective view of all sides. What makes you think it's a hit piece? Must R&D be prioritized over quality of life, environment, and be subsidized by local tax breaks/grants?
- jeffbee 1y ago_This_ article is objective. The opposition this article is discussing has been whipped into existence by the past year or so of exaggerated hit pieces.
- glitchc 1y ago> Must R&D be prioritized over quality of life, environment, and be subsidized by local tax breaks/grants? Yes, yes and maybe, if it needs to be accelerated. No part of our modern life would exist without scientific and engineering advancement. Centuries of inventions and discoveries have built on top of each other to give us the very essential (housing, plumbing, food production) that are vast improvements on the original as well as the very boutique (space travel, self-driving cars, AI), the benefits from which are not fully realized yet. Pressing pause on science is guaranteed to cause misery. The last time Europe did that it lead to the Dark and Middle ages, leading to centuries of suffering. Science is one of those few things that benefits everyone, from the very rich to the very poor. It's how we ensure that life does not remain a zero-sum game, it's how we grow the pie so that everyone can have more. Science is not free: It comes at a cost, but that cost is repaid many times over.
- paulryanrogers 1y agoIs it pressing pause on science to say data centers must be built with care and consideration?
- glitchc 1y agoI addressed the general point since the question was around whether R&D should be prioritized. Whether data centers are required for R&D (or not) is up for debate. Clearly, science to date has not been impeded by the absence of such data centres. Would their existence accelerate science? I suspect a correlation exists but not a strong one.
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- roenxi 1y agoIf China's chip industry takes off maybe they will pick up the slack? Otherwise it isn't obvious to me where the data centres will get built. Europe probably doesn't want them for environmental concerns, Africa probably isn't a good option. South America, maybe? Greater Asia seems like an obvious choice.
- monkaiju 1y agoThey could, for the most part at least, just not get built. So much of the current and new capacity is destined for nonsense like AI, would be better to simply not expand that.
- DetroitThrow 1y agoUnlike many other common private infrastructure projects being spun up, such as large warehouses or factory buildings, data centers don't employ large amounts of people except during the construction. Without much tangible benefits to help uplift a surrounding community in some way, and certainly many tangible drawbacks known to communities at this point, they seem like an easy - the easiest? - NIMBY target in an era where corporate giants have burned a lot of trust.
- soupfordummies 1y agoThey actually have NEGATIVE benefits such as sucking up the resources like electricity and water.
- 827a 1y agoHow will this impact AI 2027's legacy?
- wronglebowski 1y ago“Local opposition” and NIMBYism is the primary reason we have a housing shortage, it’s a rampant problem across the US. The few grumpy old folks that show up to local planning meetings shouldn’t hold us back as a nation. Until we can find a way to get over that hump I’m not sure how we'll move forward in many aspects.
- rescripting 1y agoExcept at least housing provides benefits to the local community. A data centre provides almost no jobs (except during construction), and draws a significant amount of resources (electricity, water, noise pollution). Why should any community want something that only enriches Amazon taking up vast swaths of land in their backyard?
- wronglebowski 1y agoHousing doesn’t benefit the local community(from most NIMBY perspectives). It makes housing more affordable lowering their property values, creates the need for more infrastructure and creates change in their environment. The motto seems to be, “Neighborhoods full, I like things the way they are. No more change please.” Doesn’t matter if it’s a data center, housing, or any type of development.
- supplied_demand 1y agoAt the same time, the most densely populated large cities are also among the most expensive.
- sorcerer-mar 1y agoThat's because the community benefits so much from density. People want to live there because the density has created fantastic amenities and jobs, ergo prices go up.
- dymk 1y agoDepends what you count as an expense and where collected taxes flow. Rural living is artificially cheap by being subsidized by its more “expensive” dense living counterpart.
- deadfece 1y agoIn Oklahoma, they tried to market a bitcoin farm project as a datacenter. It received a lot of opposition due to the noise levels anticipated. The graft team tried to get the state government to give tax graft to "datacenters" but didn't define what a DC was - which could mean the graft might go to bitcoin farms as well. I noticed that the article does not really distinguish between any of these. Please excuse my English, graft is not my first language.
- epistasis 1y agoI think noise pollution regulation would be a great way to stop undesired effects that spread from one property to another. Unfortunately when it comes to land use, we have a tendency to block overall uses rather than blocking the negative effects of those uses. This prevents many solutions from ever being tried.
- sorcerer-mar 1y ago> Unfortunately when it comes to land use, we have a tendency to block overall uses rather than blocking the negative effects of those uses Probably because history is full of developers promising to mitigate certain negative consequences and then failing to do so. I'm as YIMBY as anyone, so this history of developers being awful matters a lot to me: it galvanizes the opposition.
- epistasis 1y agoDo you have examples of this? Where has the negative effect been banned (presumably with suitable penalties) and then ignored? I'm not that young but I have not seen examples of this.
- sorcerer-mar 1y agoWhat do you mean? It happens every day. Lots are upzoned based on VeryNiceIdea and then instead StupidBullshit gets built (so long as StupidBullshit fits into the same zoning scheme as VeryNiceIdea).
- epistasis 1y agoThis is very similar to the economic destruction wrought by those who block housing in the most highly productive geographic regions of the country. By taking what would be a positive sum situation and changing it into zero sum, productive capital growth is shifted into rentier capital growth. It shifts wealth from those who use use capital to make us all wealthier to those who hoard capital and reap the work of others.
- littlestymaar 1y ago> This is very similar to the economic destruction wrought by those who block housing in the most highly productive geographic regions of the country. It's not. You are just repeating Cloud providers' talking point. Housing is a basic need, and I such many people including myself wouldn't mind overruling the locals' preferences in order to make sure everyone can have access to housing at a decent price. Data centers aren't and there are already too many of them. As a matter of fact the majority of them exist because companies worth hundreds of billions of dollar use cloud-based walled garden to milk consumers in ways they couldn't if the software was local.
- epistasis 1y ago> Data centers aren't and there are already too many of them. And here you're just repeating the same arguments that NIMBYs use to block housing. And saying "you're using the same arguments as X, X is bad, therefore your argument is bad" is nat actually a sound argument in itself, I point it out because it's ironic when you accuse me of repeating Cloud provider's talking points! Where the NIMBY argument actually falls down in that the assessment of "too many." How is that determined? Why is your answer right and the person who wants a datacenter wrong? And don't you see that your determination of "too much" is exactly what converts productive capital allocation into rentier capital allocation? What happens if you are right and the cloud provider is wrong? The cloud providers spends a bunch of money building a datacenter that doesn't get used, and loses lots of money, and pays property taxes to the local government. If you are wrong, then existing data centers are able to jack up their prices a ton, and will, and make a lot more money not because they are providing a better service, but because there's an artificial shortage. It rewards speculation, and incentivizes speculation on land uses.
- runako 1y agoLargely unaddressed by this article is whether these projects are being "canceled" as in there will be less capacity overall or being completed elsewhere (as is indicated about at least one of the "canceled" projects). Commercial RE projects are often moved and/or delayed, how is this any different?
- DetroitThrow 1y ago>Commercial RE projects are often moved and/or delayed, how is this any different? In terms of how these projects will get built, I assume they're quite similar - the bigger difference is that we're talking about tech companies and startups who may lose an early market advantage or run out of runway if their project is delayed two years. Lumen orbit, the DC-in-space startup, might run out of runway if they space construction suppliers delay their project by two years for example. This is in comparison to office buildings or automotive, where big delays can be a lot of trouble but not the end of the company.
- bitmasher9 1y agoWhy would someone want a data center near them? They provide fewer jobs than other projects of similar size, they consume huge amounts of local resources, and most are paired with significant tax breaks.
- jeffbee 1y agoReally? What are some similar sized projects? An alfalfa farm in the desert, for example, employs almost nobody, pays nothing in taxes (may even be a net consumer of taxes due to subsidies) and consumes 100x-1000x the water. These are the direct tradeoffs for new Nevada data centers.
- bitmasher9 1y agoFarming alfalfa in the desert has to be one of worst business ideas I’ve read.
- jeffbee 1y agoAnd yet ... Nevada has > 120000 hectares under irrigated cultivation for hay.
- troyvit 1y agoThat is truly stupid, but is putting a data center there any less stupid?
- jeffbee 1y agoIt is a bit less stupid, yes, because of the abundance of energy. The same reason it makes sense to make batteries and cars and stuff in Nevada.
- troyvit 1y agoCool I didn't know that Nevada had any abundance of energy (and it's practically a neighbor). I was thinking of water issues surrounding cooling and stuff, as well as data delivery to get information off those 120k hectares. Still, I can see how it's much easier than hay making.