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U.S. gov't moves to suppress pushback on data centers
- kwhitlock 2mo agoData center pushback is inevitable when entire neighborhoods feel the heat and noise.
- vintagedave 2mo ago> The latest proposal applies to permits for a "minor source" of air pollution ... [the Vantage data center was estimated to contribute] between $53 million and $99 million in annual health damages, the largest estimate for any single facility ever. 'The largest estimate for any single facility ever.' 'Minor source.' I give you double-speak, gentlefolks of HN. Name it something - anything - and you frame it in those terms forever. It will take significant work to not refer to these as 'minor sources' when debating if they are a minor source.
- internet_points 2mo agohttps://www.pecva.org/wp-content/uploads/Health-Impacts-Vantage-Data-Center-Report-2.pdf https://www.pecva.org/wp-content/uploads/Health-Impacts-Vant... the report > Based on Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (VA DEQ) air permit No. 74242, the facility is authorized to operate eight natural-gas simple-cycle turbines and more than fifty diesel generators, including emergency and black-start units
- consp 2mo agoSo it is a low efficiency power station with some servers attached to it.
- consensus1 2mo agoPeople complain when you hook them up to the high efficiency generators that power the grid, so this is what they get.
- pjc50 2mo agoPeople complain when you violate the rules and externalize harms, yes. They should be made to turn off the generators and pay enough for the electricity so as not to impact everyone else's prices.
- AnneTrotter 2mo agoGee, I wonder why people were complaining about that?
- preg_match 2mo agoIt's very simple: just take some of the existing capital and invest it towards the grid, then build the datacenter. The problem with the grid isn't electricity stealing. It's that the grid literally cannot support the amount of datacenters being built. It's not a matter of opinion, just numbers. So why won't AI companies do just that, invest in the grid? Well they want the datacenters now, not 10 years from now. I think they're all terrified investor capital will dry up at any moment, so they have to expend as much capital as possible, as fast as possible. That's stupid of course, but that's how they operate.
- consensus1 2mo agoThat's how it works already. You pay the power company and that money is invested into the grid. Somehow this has worked in Ashburn VA for their massive data center build out so I don't see why it can't work in other places too. Obviously nobody wants to wait 10 years and it has nothing to do with stupidity or fear.
- preg_match 2mo agoOkay that’s very obviously not the same thing I’m proposing, and you know that. Paying for electricity is normal. But that doesn’t magically increase the capacity. It does, in time. A lot of time. Which is why we’re using diesel generators and not building data centers. We don’t have the power, we just don’t.
- mrlonglong 2mo agoGood luck with that. Order books for gas turbines are full for decades. Diesels will probably get used and pollute everything with their stink and noise.
- docdeek 2mo agoFTA: 'The largest estimate for any single facility ever.' From the researcher: 'We estimated between $53 million and $99 million in annual health damages from associated air pollution — among the largest health-damage estimates produced for a single facility to date.' [0] Still enormous, but there is a significant difference between being 'THE X of all time, and being 'among the X of all time'. Regarding 'minor source', in this case the expected additional premature deaths in the research range from 3.4 to 6.5 annually. [1] At the same time, air pollution leads to about 100,000 deaths a year in the US. While tragic at an individual level, adding 0.006% to the annual premature death count is fairly minor, just as reducing the deaths to 999,994 would be considered a pretty minor fix to the issue. [0]: https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/analyzing-air-pollution-health-economic-risks-from-ai-data-centers/ https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/analyzing-air-pollution-health... [1]: https://www.pecva.org/wp-content/uploads/Health-Impacts-Vantage-Data-Center-Report-2.pdf https://www.pecva.org/wp-content/uploads/Health-Impacts-Vant... [2]: https://sustainability.stanford.edu/news/identifying-sources-deadly-air-pollution-us https://sustainability.stanford.edu/news/identifying-sources...
- watwut 2mo agoHealth costs don't matter, because someone else is paying them. We handwave them with "well only 3-4 additional people die after paying that cost. The air pollution does not matter, because global warming already exists and air is already polluted. And making all that worst also does not matter, because who cares about anything but what AI companies want.
- da_chicken 2mo ago> Regarding 'minor source', in this case the expected additional premature deaths in the research range from 3.4 to 6.5 annually. [1] At the same time, air pollution leads to about 100,000 deaths a year in the US. While tragic at an individual level, adding 0.006% to the annual premature death count is fairly minor, just as reducing the deaths to 999,994 would be considered a pretty minor fix to the issue. I just love the irony of being absurdly callous and dismissive of human life while also getting the basic math wrong. Nevermind that the 100,000 figure is across the nation of 300 million and includes things like automotive exhaust, while the other number is likely to be borne by that one specific community. Indeed, if you look at the study[0] your article cites -- which is looking at what we should be working on reducing -- industrial deaths are under 30,000, and electrical are around 10,000. So below half of your figure. [0]: https://pubs.acs.org/estlcu/article/7/9/639/504911/Reducing-Mortality-from-Air-Pollution-in-the https://pubs.acs.org/estlcu/article/7/9/639/504911/Reducing-...
- vintagedave 2mo agoThis is relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49446879 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49446879
- j1elo 2mo ago- 'How many fingers, Winston?'
- Gormo 2mo agoI'm seeing a lot of these sorts of articles talking about things like air pollution, but something seems a bit off, given that, to my knowledge, computers do not produce any emissions at all. The article lumps data centers in with landfills, laundromats, and steel mills. But landfills, laundromats, and steel mills all involve physical waste products that can have chemical or biological effects on the surrounding environment. What waste products do data centers output? The article talks about expanding a fossil fuel plant as the source of the pollution question in the Virginia example. This seems only tangentially related to data centers, which don't care what specific technologies are used to generate fungible electricity. Are these disingenuous attempts to attribute pollution originating from power plants to one specific, cherry-picked application of electrical power (despite the increasing prevalence of clean generation technologies over polluting ones, and despite lots of other, unrelated drivers of increased demand for electrical power)? Or is there something more to these arguments that I'm missing?
- Tyr42 2mo agoBehind the meter power generation is being included on site with the data centers.
- AnneTrotter 2mo agoThe data centers described incorporate dedicated power generation into their design. The power generation is fossil fuel based and high-pollution, and is being deployed at scale.
- tosapple 2mo ago[dead]
- pjc50 2mo agoThe specific issue is that because it's a data center, from a company with unlimited money and therefore political power, it's being allowed to skip all the rules about clean generation. The ones in question are building on-side dirty power.
- pixl97 2mo ago
- JohnTHaller 2mo agoMost of this administration contradicts themselves within a few minutes within a single speech, so this isn't unexpected.
- feverzsj 2mo agoIt doesn't matter, as long as officials are still elected by locals.
- Avicebron 2mo agoRight? These people approvinf these projects are still living in the communities they are damaging
- consensus1 2mo agoAnd this doesn't make you question the narrative that they are really damaging anything?
- flanked-evergl 2mo agoThis degrowth anti-technology mindset just does not make sense to me, and I think it's mostly astroturfed from TikTok.
- goda90 2mo agoWhat part confuses you? The threat to stable and affordable electricity and water supply? The water, light and noise pollution? The threat to jobs? The threat to truth and transparency? The threat to privacy?
- flanked-evergl 2mo ago> The threat to stable and affordable electricity and water supply The only threat to stable and affordable electricity supply is government regulations. The idea that we will from here on just have degrown and decline is insane. I'm not up for that. Which means we will always need more electricity, so time to get building more power plants. There is no bounds to how much electricity humans need, and the more we have the more prosperity we will have As for water supply. Data centers barely make a blip on the water usage. > The water, light and noise pollution? The only one of these which actually has any validity is noise pollution, and the US has one of the lowest population densities of any country in the world, and data centres don't need to be close to population centres. > The threat to jobs? CEOs saying they are laying people off because of AI is not the same as anyone losing their job because of AI, but even if that was the case, it's about as smart as not using an electric drill to save jobs. > The threat to truth and transparency? AI does not only not threaten truth and transparency, it makes it easier to find the truth and to circumvent transperency restrictions. > The threat to privacy? It's not.
- vrganj 2mo ago> The only threat to stable and affordable electricity supply is government regulations That is straight up not true. Theres currently a threat due to the imprudently started war in the Middle East, there will be more once rivers start drying up and hydropower becomes unreliable or nuclear power plants can no longer be cooled. > Which means we will always need more electricity, so time to get building more power plants. There is no bounds to how much electricity humans need, and the more we have the more prosperity we will have This is an ideological dogma smuggled in as a self-evident truth. Please do make a point, not just an unsupported declaration.
- ModernMech 2mo agoIt’s funny as Greg Abbott says the data center industry did this to themselves and people’s complaints are justified; the feds say it’s “paid protestors”, the same way they say any protests are inorganic paid leftist agitators. Meanwhile “real” American patriots know data centers make America great, and can’t wait to have one built down the road.
- budman1 2mo agoData Centers is the only time in my memory that Greg Abbott has even thought about listening to citizen concerns. And of course, when the citizens selling THC beverages were concerned about the legislature making the product illegal. Me thinks the Data Center people have been stingy with the checkbook.
- justin66 2mo agoI saw a photo of him sitting down in a very concerned about data centers interview and the thing that struck me was that his wheelchair was visible. This represents a change in his style. (if he thinks it's going to make him more sympathetic to the average person I'd cynically say that's probably true, since he's starting from zero...)
- ravshan 2mo agoIsn't he talking about data centers because he is up to reelection in november?
- fuzzfactor 2mo agoHe declared a surprise moratoriun on new data centers one day not too long ago. It was such a stark about-face it seemed like a dramatic response to some new polling data his campaign was not expecting. I would think if he is not re-elected he would immediately drop the moratorium right after the election, than pull out all the stops to accelerate permitting and building as much as possible before his term is up, against the peoples' will who voted in a non-Trumpard of some kind. OTOH if he is re-elected he would probably do the exact same thing :\
- cmiles8 2mo agoThere isn’t much the federal government can do here. Planning permission is very local in the US. If local officials don’t want a data center it isn’t happening. In most communities these days you’d have better luck proposing to build a toxic waste processing facility than a data center.
- roosterIllusi0n 2mo agoThey can certainly look the other way when these small town boards get paid off to allow the datacenter.
- cmiles8 2mo agoWell the reason data center stuff is news is that local boards are resisting all the usual efforts. It’s been quite extraordinary, but town after town is sending the data center folks packing.
- detourdog 2mo agoFERC is some sort of law that takes control of local ordnances to force local municipalities to accept energy infrastructure. https://ferc.gov/ https://ferc.gov/
- cmiles8 2mo agoIn theory yes. In practice if the local congressman wants to keep their job they’ll block it at any cost if there’s local opposition.
- detourdog 2mo agoI watched Massachusetts fail at this opposition about a decade ago. Courts sided with the feds. https://ferc.gov/ https://ferc.gov/ https://nofrackedgasinmass.com/massachusetts-pipelines/ https://nofrackedgasinmass.com/massachusetts-pipelines/
- 2mo ago
- oefrha 2mo agoWhat I don’t understand is that the vast majority of LLM workloads are pretty damn latency-insensitive. Why can’t they build these data centers where there’s little to no opposition? Sure someone will need to maintain the data centers, but with trillions in investment lined up, surely they can just pay people enough so they’re okay with living in the middle of nowhere. Edit: When I say the middle of nowhere I mean say an hour’s drive from civilization, not the Arctic Circle.
- jhanschoo 2mo agoThey can, surely, but I presume that in some cases there's a lack of preexisting regulation on land use and on others politicians are not properly representing the interests of their constituency.
- uniq7 2mo agoDatacenters need a source of water, and human populations are usually concentrated in those places too for the same reason.
- trollbridge 2mo agoPlenty of ice cold water in northern Quebec.
- Phemist 2mo agoIt seems that e.g. OpenAI is mostly power constrained. To go to the middle of nowhere would mean also basically no power grid to speak off?
- armada651 2mo agoIt's difficult getting a grid connection and fiber optic uplinks in the middle of nowhere.
- trollbridge 2mo agoPlenty of power in northern Quebec.
- Zambyte 2mo agoIt seems like there will be a collapse in building data centers, to the point that a large amount of the newly built ones will be reclaimed for other things. There is a very large group of people who are against building new data centers because they hate AI (and any pollution related arguments these people make are in support of their primary concern, being AI). But on the flip side of that, even people that I know that go out of their way to use AI, mostly seem interested in building their own AI rigs and running everything locally. I know that's what I do; I almost never use any hosted AI services these days, but I'm using more tokens than ever. The demand for data centers from people who actually like AI even seems to be plummeting.
- XorNot 2mo agoWhat are you running at home, out of interest? While I cautiously circle the AI programming concept, one thing close to my mind has definitely been whether the ultimately cloud-tied nature of it is what makes me much more stand offish to it.
- vrganj 2mo agoNot the parent, but I'm enjoying Qwen 3.8 27B on my Strix Halo machine.
- Zambyte 2mo agoAlso running Qwen 3.8 27b, on a 7900 XTX. I've been able to comfortably do a large majority of my programming locally since about Qwen 3.5. I also use pi.dev as my agent harness, and ollama as my inference engine. Though I've been considering switching out the latter for something else, since the main advantage of ollama is the ease of switching models, which I don't really do often anymore.
- kodoman 2mo agoI am GPU poor and have a piece of crap rx570 8GB but still get ok performance out of qwen3.5-9B-4bit and various fine tuned versions. Plan on finally buying a decent gpu like a amd 7900 xtx. I still use claude for coding primarily but do research locally. What everyone has said about qwen3.8 though is making me feel I really need to invest in a decent rig.
- globemaster99 2mo agoSo much democracy and freedom.
- t_gamer_kle 2mo agoIt's better than democracy. It's Managed Democracy.
- m4rtink 2mo agoThat is totally going to work, doubling down on something unpopular by un unpopular government has never caused exponentially bigger blowback.
- NishanStepak 2mo agoMany data centers will move north into the Nordic countries where the climate is colder and there is a lot of hydroelectric and wind power. Canada and the Nordic countries will end up building a lot of data centers in remote areas where they are less visible. At the same time, the more the US government acts to support data centers, the greater the reaction will be against them. It is the classic situation where the more the government does, the less people will like it.
- inglor_cz 2mo agoThe question is who will service massive data centers in northern Québec or Norwegian mountains in winter. They will have to be robotized to a large degree. And the few humans necessary will have to be very well paid. The social cost is real.
- NishanStepak 2mo agoWith the Nordic area, it is already happening. I am not sure it will be as much of a problem, because there will be a lot less jobs with automation. The promise of a good job even in a cold climate will draw people. It will be like the oil fields, except with hydroelectric, wind, and cold climates which will help sustainability. Nvidia and many of the large data companies have already been moving north. North will probably include Alaska as well, because of the cold weather, large amounts of hydroelectric power, and the people used to working remotely.
- whatsThisBtn4 2mo ago[flagged]
- Guthwine 2mo agoYour account was created <1 month ago, you have made ~25 comments and at least 4 of them mention China. You doth protesting too much?
- financetechbro 2mo agoPro data center propaganda paid for by US govt probably
- whatsThisBtn4 2mo agoWait, you didn't read the news articles that China is using United States social media astroturfing to undermine the United States on data centers? I thought people on HN kept up with this.
- jqpabc123 2mo agoThis move to hide the data only reinforces the legitimate public concern.
- randusername 2mo agoHow naive I was to hope that the strain data centers will place on the electric grid would spur very big, very public investment in renewable energy and nuclear. Somebody has to realize that gas turbines are backordered to the 2030s meanwhile the ROI on solar is getting impossible to ignore.
- pjc50 2mo agoIt might "spur" through higher prices, since electricity is basically a private concern is (most? All?) of the US and many Western countries. Of course the general public hates this inflation and hence the cause. The only fair and workable solution is to make the data center investors pay for the grid upgrade before the data center is turned on. They can wait a decade for nuclear reactors, right?
- boesboes 2mo agoThey'll just buy you out, no more power or water for you, peasant
- eclipticplane 2mo agoHopefully that 'somebody' that realizes is this US Administration, which to date has paid billions in fees to wind energy companies to not build wind farms. They are quite literally paying companies to not build renewable energy.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 2mo agoOriginal E.P.A. Moves to Curb Public Input on Data Centers https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/25/climate/epa-data-centers-public-comment.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/25/climate/epa-data-centers-...
- shovepull 2mo ago[dead]
- ETH_start 2mo agoHamstringing the build out of AI compute facilities in the United States is strategic suicide. AI compute is a major emerging export industry and the United States is very well positioned to dominate it, unlike mass manufacturing. If it cannot take advantage of its unique strength in AI compute, then it is going to lose the global economic race. AI compute is the first major expansion of physical capital in the United States since the post-war era. Decades of outsourcing and downsizing are finally reversing and helping spur a constellation of supporting industries, like gas turbine manufacturing, a scaling up of energy production and upgrades in the telecommunication infrastructure, in building out high-capacity data links.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- smitty1e 2mo agoThe political thing to do here is run for office on a "Data Centers are teh Devil" platform; harness the angst; win; and then do the opposite and approve them all. Teach the peasantry the value of their benighted opinions.