5 ms·

One under-discussed topic is whether Americans hate data centers in their neighborhoods, or whether they actually just hate gas turbine generators running 24/7

by boc 2mo ago

One under-discussed topic is whether Americans hate data centers in their neighborhoods, or whether they actually just hate gas turbine generators running 24/7 in their neighborhoods.

b40d-48b2-979e 2mo ago
whether they actually just hate gas turbine generators running 24/7 in their neighborhoods. Or the increased pollution (air, light, and sound) from having a warehouse-sized building of GPUs next to you. I'm already annoyed by my neighbors having spotlights pointed at their own houses or leaving garage lights on through the night that shine in through my bedroom windows.
- rzerowan 2mo ago
  Im wondering why the typical design is a warehouse with horizontal sprawl . Wouldnt it make sense to go vertical up or down . Smaller footprint if insidea a metro area by having a skyscarper type data center , as i recall AT&T used to have such windowless anonymous buldings scattered in some cities for their equipment. Or have a Silo type structure going down if in a more rural area to not blight the landscape.With added advantage of dampenig on the sound pollution (although not sure what effects a humming underground building will have on subterrerean life). Probably cost? All those would cost more that the biz are willing to spend , while putting up four walls and a roof is ordeers of scale cheaper.
  - rtkwe 2mo ago
    It's cheaper to build out rather than build up. Datacenters are mass dense so building up requires thick floors and supports for the upper floors.
  - lbriner 2mo ago
    Definitely cost although your idea does sound more attractive. A small footprint much further away from the boundary than normal. You could even make them look nice but since demand is massive and timescales so long, I think anything that might take longer is a "no".
  - dylan604 2mo ago
    Coming from a construction family, the saying oft heard saying was "it's more expensive to build up than out". Also, zoning codes can set limits on how tall of a building can be built. Four stories is a common limit which also happens to coincide with the max height for a timber construction is also four stories. If you're out in the 'burbs, you probably wouldn't want to see a random 10 story boring windowless concrete building sticking up somewhere.
    - inigyou 2mo ago
      I see you've been to Avalon Studios.
  - b40d-48b2-979e 2mo ago
    as i recall AT&T used to have such windowless anonymous buldings scattered in some cities for their equipment I worked in Cleveland, and the AT&T building there was one such case. I heard their cabling went 3 stories underground on top of being around 50 floors tall.
sulam 2mo ago
The typical inhabitant of a town that is a good candidate for data center construction is suspicious of authority, hates big tech companies, has heard AI is coming for their job, and consequently not a supporter of data centers, regardless of how they're powered.
palmotea 2mo ago
> One under-discussed topic is whether Americans hate data centers in their neighborhoods, or whether they actually just hate gas turbine generators running 24/7 in their neighborhoods. Actually, Americans hate Silicon Valley and AI, the data centers are just a concrete proxy: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/04/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-jasmine-sun.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/04/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas...: > It’s A.I. as sort of an avatar for a small group of Silicon Valley billionaires’ ability to impose their vision of the world onto everybody else without their consent. > And I think that’s also what I hear echoed in these data center debates. It’s not just: It’s going to use this much water or that much water. I frankly think that even if there was no misinformation about water use, people would be just as angry about the data centers. > ... > And what happened? The data center developers sued Saline Township, a town of, again, a few thousand people, saying: Wait, no, this is exclusionary zoning. You can’t have no industrial use in your entire township. And when a town of that size is getting sued by a giant A.I. data center developer, they just settled. > They were just like: Fine, give us a few million for the fire department and for some schools, and this fight is not worth it to us. But that, to people, felt like a profound violation of little-D democracy. > It felt like the dark money in politics story, which is: You have some very rich companies show up with a bag of money to your politicians. They don’t tell anybody else what’s happening. The politicians aren’t allowed to tell their citizens and involve them in the decision-making process, and they themselves work out a deal — a deal that is fundamentally asymmetric because of the amount of money on one side — that will then transform the image of your community, your lived reality, into the world that these tech companies have decided for you. > And so I think that the data centers, in that sense, are a very visceral microcosm of the way that a lot of people feel that A.I. is showing up in their lives.
- nancyminusone 2mo ago
  That Saline datacenter is the one I live closest to. I actually know a couple people who live right next to it. The above is basically what happened, but done in the open after that first lawsuit, to the tune of "do what we say or we'll sue you into bankruptcy and then get our way anyways". Mist recent, the datacenter's cost has shot up to ~50 billion, fow which they decided they wanted a tax break of 50% for 12 years, and it was granted using the same methods. also, they named the datacenter project "The Barn" as an extra slap in the face, like look at how quirky and rural we are. I would actually have more respect for them if they had named it "Fuck You Saline".
JohnFen 2mo ago
At least in my part of the US, the datacenters built (and planned) are not running their own gas generators, but are just as hated here as they are most other places due to the other adverse impacts they have.
- Legend2440 2mo ago
  I don't really think it's about the adverse impacts. That one in utah everybody hated was gonna be built in an empty valley. There would have been no impact to neighbors because there weren't any, and no impact to the grid because they planned to build their own nuclear power plant.
  - tempfile 2mo ago
    They are being built to support an industry which is itself an adverse impact.
  - mindcandy 2mo ago
    Are you talking about the Box Elder County Stratos project? I did some digging into that. AFAIK, they are mostly going to be powered by a natural gas pipeline. I haven't heard of them using nuclear. Got any links? It is in a remote valley. And, it's going to use less groundwater than the previous use of the land. The only things to really complain about are huge amounts of gas consumption and AI bad. If the locals pinned them down to building out solar and mini-nuke power, the only thing left would be AI bad.
- wiether 2mo ago
  Aren't all DC equipped with gas generators as backups? And they have to run it for an hour every quarter to make sure they work?
  - inigyou 2mo ago
    Probably, but that isn't the problem people have with gas generators. Musk is running 30 of them 24/7 to power xAI because there isn't enough grid capacity in the area, and he removed exhaust filters for efficiency and gave several entire towns permanent chronic asthma from NOx poisoning.
bs7280 2mo ago
I hate that I am subsidizing the power bills for these data centers.
- 0xy 2mo ago
  So you would support the construction of data centers with completely off-grid power sources that you did not subsidize? Didn't think so.
  - bs7280 2mo ago
    What about my comment gave you the confidence to (incorrectly) answer your own question for me? I want to see large investment in mass produced nuclear power plants, enabling us to do exactly what you are suggesting.
    - inigyou 2mo ago
      Oh boy. I can't wait to see what the people who remove the exhaust filters from their gas turbines would do with a nuclear plant.
      - bs7280 2mo ago
        https://www.valaratomics.com/ https://www.valaratomics.com/
  - nvme0n1p1 2mo ago
    What a goofy comment. "I hate that my tax dollars were used to bomb Iran" "So you would support the bombing of countries that aren't Iran?"
    - inigyou 2mo ago
      It was actually "so you would support a billionaire bombing Iran with his own dollars?"
      - 2mo ago
arctic-true 2mo ago
I think the “in their neighborhoods” thing is really the key. These things have got to be poison for property values. Younger, less wealthy people have economic anxiety about AI for fear of displacement and oppose data centers on that basis - more data centers = more AI. Older, wealthier people have less intrinsic reason to oppose the technology. But anything that threatens property values, be it a data center, a jail, a landfill, et cetera, must be resisted at all costs.
georgemcbay 2mo ago
I'm sure there are various reasons why specific individual Americans hate data centers, but in the aggregate I think the main unifying force is that Americans hate the rapidly growing (and already larger than the gilded age) wealth inequality that is making their lives shittier if they don't already own significant capital. At a national level, the political establishment is doing nothing useful to fix this problem and is instead making things much worse. Many people are very upset about this, but it is is going to take years to fix this problem electorally (though I do believe it is possible for this to happen, given all the recent evidence that giant political money spends on status quo candidates are increasingly not working and arguably starting to have the opposite effect of being toxic for the candidates who receive them). Data centers are a flashpoint of leverage where the rightfully pissed off populace has the ability to use local political power to take a stand and throw a wrench into the system today rather than 2/4/6/8 years from now.
forgotpwagain 2mo ago
And also their electricity bills rising because of datacenter power demands.
goda90 2mo ago
People are going to assume any data center project will have all the worst possible qualities. And a this point I'd say they're justified given how much dishonesty and corruption has been flying around. I don't envy any company that's being open and taking steps to mitigate issues because all the others have caused this hostile environment.
- notyourwork 2mo ago
  Seems there is opportunity for a company to rise to the top if they take a stance that buys societal goodwill.
  - inigyou 2mo ago
    But then they wouldn't make a profit. This whole thing is highly speculative. Most of the buildings won't get any use, and the ones that do will be strictly the ones with the lowest costs.
threatofrain 2mo ago
Would they hate them as much if they were in a Chinese neighborhood? Why not build in China? We say there's not much jobs here anyway, and that it's all negative externalities.
rainsford 2mo ago
The gas turbine thing really is justifiably killing the public perception of data centers since the obvious message is that even if your local data center isn't destroying your quality of life with incessant noise, it's only because they have decided it's not in their best interest to do so right now and that decision could change at any moment. As long as that is a possibility ever, you'd have to be nuts to want a data center built anywhere near where you live.

by boc 2mo ago

One under-discussed topic is whether Americans hate data centers in their neighborhoods, or whether they actually just hate gas turbine generators running 24/7 in their neighborhoods.

b40d-48b2-979e 2mo ago

whether they actually just hate gas turbine generators running 24/7 in their neighborhoods. Or the increased pollution (air, light, and sound) from having a warehouse-sized building of GPUs next to you. I'm already annoyed by my neighbors having spotlights pointed at their own houses or leaving garage lights on through the night that shine in through my bedroom windows.

rzerowan 2mo ago
Im wondering why the typical design is a warehouse with horizontal sprawl . Wouldnt it make sense to go vertical up or down . Smaller footprint if insidea a metro area by having a skyscarper type data center , as i recall AT&T used to have such windowless anonymous buldings scattered in some cities for their equipment. Or have a Silo type structure going down if in a more rural area to not blight the landscape.With added advantage of dampenig on the sound pollution (although not sure what effects a humming underground building will have on subterrerean life). Probably cost? All those would cost more that the biz are willing to spend , while putting up four walls and a roof is ordeers of scale cheaper.
- rtkwe 2mo ago
  It's cheaper to build out rather than build up. Datacenters are mass dense so building up requires thick floors and supports for the upper floors.
- lbriner 2mo ago
  Definitely cost although your idea does sound more attractive. A small footprint much further away from the boundary than normal. You could even make them look nice but since demand is massive and timescales so long, I think anything that might take longer is a "no".
- dylan604 2mo ago
  Coming from a construction family, the saying oft heard saying was "it's more expensive to build up than out". Also, zoning codes can set limits on how tall of a building can be built. Four stories is a common limit which also happens to coincide with the max height for a timber construction is also four stories. If you're out in the 'burbs, you probably wouldn't want to see a random 10 story boring windowless concrete building sticking up somewhere.
  - inigyou 2mo ago
    I see you've been to Avalon Studios.
- b40d-48b2-979e 2mo ago
  as i recall AT&T used to have such windowless anonymous buldings scattered in some cities for their equipment I worked in Cleveland, and the AT&T building there was one such case. I heard their cabling went 3 stories underground on top of being around 50 floors tall.

sulam 2mo ago

The typical inhabitant of a town that is a good candidate for data center construction is suspicious of authority, hates big tech companies, has heard AI is coming for their job, and consequently not a supporter of data centers, regardless of how they're powered.

palmotea 2mo ago

> One under-discussed topic is whether Americans hate data centers in their neighborhoods, or whether they actually just hate gas turbine generators running 24/7 in their neighborhoods. Actually, Americans hate Silicon Valley and AI, the data centers are just a concrete proxy: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/04/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-jasmine-sun.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/04/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas...: > It’s A.I. as sort of an avatar for a small group of Silicon Valley billionaires’ ability to impose their vision of the world onto everybody else without their consent. > And I think that’s also what I hear echoed in these data center debates. It’s not just: It’s going to use this much water or that much water. I frankly think that even if there was no misinformation about water use, people would be just as angry about the data centers. > ... > And what happened? The data center developers sued Saline Township, a town of, again, a few thousand people, saying: Wait, no, this is exclusionary zoning. You can’t have no industrial use in your entire township. And when a town of that size is getting sued by a giant A.I. data center developer, they just settled. > They were just like: Fine, give us a few million for the fire department and for some schools, and this fight is not worth it to us. But that, to people, felt like a profound violation of little-D democracy. > It felt like the dark money in politics story, which is: You have some very rich companies show up with a bag of money to your politicians. They don’t tell anybody else what’s happening. The politicians aren’t allowed to tell their citizens and involve them in the decision-making process, and they themselves work out a deal — a deal that is fundamentally asymmetric because of the amount of money on one side — that will then transform the image of your community, your lived reality, into the world that these tech companies have decided for you. > And so I think that the data centers, in that sense, are a very visceral microcosm of the way that a lot of people feel that A.I. is showing up in their lives.

nancyminusone 2mo ago
That Saline datacenter is the one I live closest to. I actually know a couple people who live right next to it. The above is basically what happened, but done in the open after that first lawsuit, to the tune of "do what we say or we'll sue you into bankruptcy and then get our way anyways". Mist recent, the datacenter's cost has shot up to ~50 billion, fow which they decided they wanted a tax break of 50% for 12 years, and it was granted using the same methods. also, they named the datacenter project "The Barn" as an extra slap in the face, like look at how quirky and rural we are. I would actually have more respect for them if they had named it "Fuck You Saline".

JohnFen 2mo ago

At least in my part of the US, the datacenters built (and planned) are not running their own gas generators, but are just as hated here as they are most other places due to the other adverse impacts they have.

Legend2440 2mo ago
I don't really think it's about the adverse impacts. That one in utah everybody hated was gonna be built in an empty valley. There would have been no impact to neighbors because there weren't any, and no impact to the grid because they planned to build their own nuclear power plant.
- tempfile 2mo ago
  They are being built to support an industry which is itself an adverse impact.
- mindcandy 2mo ago
  Are you talking about the Box Elder County Stratos project? I did some digging into that. AFAIK, they are mostly going to be powered by a natural gas pipeline. I haven't heard of them using nuclear. Got any links? It is in a remote valley. And, it's going to use less groundwater than the previous use of the land. The only things to really complain about are huge amounts of gas consumption and AI bad. If the locals pinned them down to building out solar and mini-nuke power, the only thing left would be AI bad.
wiether 2mo ago
Aren't all DC equipped with gas generators as backups? And they have to run it for an hour every quarter to make sure they work?
- inigyou 2mo ago
  Probably, but that isn't the problem people have with gas generators. Musk is running 30 of them 24/7 to power xAI because there isn't enough grid capacity in the area, and he removed exhaust filters for efficiency and gave several entire towns permanent chronic asthma from NOx poisoning.

bs7280 2mo ago

I hate that I am subsidizing the power bills for these data centers.

0xy 2mo ago
So you would support the construction of data centers with completely off-grid power sources that you did not subsidize? Didn't think so.
- bs7280 2mo ago
  What about my comment gave you the confidence to (incorrectly) answer your own question for me? I want to see large investment in mass produced nuclear power plants, enabling us to do exactly what you are suggesting.
  - inigyou 2mo ago
    Oh boy. I can't wait to see what the people who remove the exhaust filters from their gas turbines would do with a nuclear plant.
    - bs7280 2mo ago
      https://www.valaratomics.com/ https://www.valaratomics.com/
- nvme0n1p1 2mo ago
  What a goofy comment. "I hate that my tax dollars were used to bomb Iran" "So you would support the bombing of countries that aren't Iran?"
  - inigyou 2mo ago
    It was actually "so you would support a billionaire bombing Iran with his own dollars?"
    - 2mo ago

arctic-true 2mo ago

I think the “in their neighborhoods” thing is really the key. These things have got to be poison for property values. Younger, less wealthy people have economic anxiety about AI for fear of displacement and oppose data centers on that basis - more data centers = more AI. Older, wealthier people have less intrinsic reason to oppose the technology. But anything that threatens property values, be it a data center, a jail, a landfill, et cetera, must be resisted at all costs.

georgemcbay 2mo ago

I'm sure there are various reasons why specific individual Americans hate data centers, but in the aggregate I think the main unifying force is that Americans hate the rapidly growing (and already larger than the gilded age) wealth inequality that is making their lives shittier if they don't already own significant capital. At a national level, the political establishment is doing nothing useful to fix this problem and is instead making things much worse. Many people are very upset about this, but it is is going to take years to fix this problem electorally (though I do believe it is possible for this to happen, given all the recent evidence that giant political money spends on status quo candidates are increasingly not working and arguably starting to have the opposite effect of being toxic for the candidates who receive them). Data centers are a flashpoint of leverage where the rightfully pissed off populace has the ability to use local political power to take a stand and throw a wrench into the system today rather than 2/4/6/8 years from now.

forgotpwagain 2mo ago

And also their electricity bills rising because of datacenter power demands.

goda90 2mo ago

People are going to assume any data center project will have all the worst possible qualities. And a this point I'd say they're justified given how much dishonesty and corruption has been flying around. I don't envy any company that's being open and taking steps to mitigate issues because all the others have caused this hostile environment.

notyourwork 2mo ago
Seems there is opportunity for a company to rise to the top if they take a stance that buys societal goodwill.
- inigyou 2mo ago
  But then they wouldn't make a profit. This whole thing is highly speculative. Most of the buildings won't get any use, and the ones that do will be strictly the ones with the lowest costs.

threatofrain 2mo ago

Would they hate them as much if they were in a Chinese neighborhood? Why not build in China? We say there's not much jobs here anyway, and that it's all negative externalities.

rainsford 2mo ago

The gas turbine thing really is justifiably killing the public perception of data centers since the obvious message is that even if your local data center isn't destroying your quality of life with incessant noise, it's only because they have decided it's not in their best interest to do so right now and that decision could change at any moment. As long as that is a possibility ever, you'd have to be nuts to want a data center built anywhere near where you live.