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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 c

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.

running101 22d ago
Or the fact everyone's utility bills are going up.
- simondotau 22d ago
  In part due to rising global prices of energy resources, which affect local markets and non-oil markets due to the (partial) fungibility of energy and the global nature of marketplaces.
VoodooJuJu 22d ago
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nxm 22d ago
That includes nuclear power, correct?
- triceratops 22d ago
  Can they build it safely as fast as the data center it's meant to power? Full steam ahead then.
  - postalrat 22d ago
    It can be a little later. Your requirements is like demanding nobody can buy a house unless they have pay they entire amount upfront.
    - AndrewDucker 22d ago
      People do not believe big companies when they say "I'll deal with the externalities a little later."
    - triceratops 22d ago
      So then does the data center compensate local residents for their higher power bills today? Until the new capacity comes online? > Your requirements is like demanding nobody can buy a house unless they have pay they entire amount upfront. No it's like demanding your new neighbors aren't forced to lend you money for your purchase - which is entirely reasonable. If you need money, get it from the bank. The top-level comment explains it already: "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."
    - no-name-here 22d ago
      It typically takes 11-12 years for a nuclear plant to get built including planning and construction [1]. Is the idea that we'd build the data centers now, and finish the nuclear plants to power them 11-12 years from now? https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Typical-timeline-of-a-nuclear-plant-construction-and-start-up-project-Source-IAEA_fig5_304660691 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Typical-timeline-of-a-nu...
      - leonidasrup 22d ago
        For wind turbine project from design and planning to operational use-takes approximately 4-7 years. An offshore wind turbine project requires about 7-10 years. https://jmhpower.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-wind-turbine/ https://jmhpower.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-wind-t...
        triceratops 22d ago
        > For wind turbine project from design and planning to operational use-takes approximately 4-7 years. That's still better than 11-12 years. How long does a solar farm take? If residents' opposition is rooted in higher power prices, data centers could just pay extra instead until the new capacity comes online. Seems like a cheap way to pay off opposition. > An offshore wind turbine project requires about 7-10 years. Given this article is about Pennsylvania, it'll probably take millions of years.
  - leonidasrup 22d ago
    Some older nuclear power plants are been commissioned back into production: Three Mile Island "2027 – Nuclear Regulatory Commission to decide whether to issue operating license to Constellation Energy, with the decision expected in May. If granted, Constellation expects to bring the reactor back online later in the year." https://www.witf.org/2026/07/28/three-mile-island-reactor-restart-progresses-through-environmental-review-public-comments/ https://www.witf.org/2026/07/28/three-mile-island-reactor-re... Michigan’s Palisades nuclear power plant https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/nuclear/americas-first-nuclear-plant-restart https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/nuclear/americas-first-... Duane Arnold Energy Center in Iowa https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/nextera-energy-partners-with-google-restart-iowa-nuclear-plant-2025-10-27/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/nextera-energy-partn... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duane_Arnold_Energy_Center#Restart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duane_Arnold_Energy_Center#Res...
    - triceratops 22d ago
      If electricity bills are steady or falling they should have no trouble convincing voters. Nothing to worry about.
  - bluGill 22d ago
    You don't need to build them. You can just not retire, or unretire one. Though we really should get better at building nuclear power plants. I'm think more of small ones to power ships though, not land based ones. Ships are one of the few places where oil/coal are used that there are not realistic renewable alternatives.
- mschuster91 22d ago
  Nuclear power takes 10-20 years to build from scratch.
  - leonidasrup 22d ago
    Median build time for 1 GW nuclear power plant in Japan was 1721 days (4.7 years), first concrete to grid connection. https://x.com/GrantChalmers/status/1422472474487263233 https://x.com/GrantChalmers/status/1422472474487263233
    - mschuster91 22d ago
      [dead]
    - no-name-here 22d ago
      1. The 2 reactors under construction [1 > CONSTRUCTION] are expected to take 20 years and >20 years respectively [2][3]. 2. Nuclear Safety Commission Chairman Haruki Madarame told a parliamentary inquiry that "Japan's atomic safety rules are inferior to global standards and left the country unprepared for the Fukushima nuclear disaster". There were flaws in, and lax enforcement of, the safety rules governing Japanese nuclear power companies. [4 (Bloomberg: "Nuclear Safety Chief Says Lax Rules Led to Fukushima Crisis")] 3. Additionally, your source is from more than 5 years ago; in those additional >5 years, neither of the 2 under-construction Japan plants (started in 2006 and 2010) have finished, and 1 is not expected until 2030 (I couldn't find an expected date for the other). 4. The phase you mentioned is a relatively small amount (~1/3) of a nuclear reactor's total startup timeline. [6] 5. Japan was the fastest country from your 2021 source (before taking into account that current JP builds are taking 20+ years). 6. The last Japan reactor to go online was in the 2000s [1 > OPERATION]. [1] https://cnpp.iaea.org/public/countries/JP/profile/preview https://cnpp.iaea.org/public/countries/JP/profile/preview [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%8Cma_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%8Cma_Nuclear_Power_Plant [3] https://pris-stats.iaea.org/reactor/862 https://pris-stats.iaea.org/reactor/862 [4] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-02-16/nuclear-safety-chief-says-lax-rules-led-to-fukushima-disaster https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-02-16/nuclear-s... [5] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Typical-timeline-of-a-nuclear-plant-construction-and-start-up-project-Source-IAEA_fig5_304660691 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Typical-timeline-of-a-nu...
- no-name-here 22d ago
  I'm fine with any power source, but all sources should include all lifetime externality costs (including for fossil/nuclear/renewable): * Externality costs for items like pollution * Any required insurance cost during their lifetime (not subsidized) * An up-front bond or similar to cover final decommissioning and any required long-term storage costs (again, for fossil/renewable/nuclear)
- sidewndr46 22d ago
  By the time nuclear power were to come online in the US, most of these datacenters would be idled and possibly even demolished.
sschueller 22d 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.
- deleted 22d ago
  [deleted]
redwood 22d ago
No a big part is that the buildings are ugly and transform the character of a place that folks grew up in. Maybe focus should be put on beautifying these buildings in some way
- wood_spirit 22d ago
  Even if invisible they would not be a popular neighbour because they are a very overt reminder to the poor people around them how uneven the wealth and political power distribution is between them and the tech exec owners?
  - bluGill 22d ago
    They should be popular - they pay property taxes to the local schools without taking much from the community at all. (note that I'm coming out against the all too common tax breaks that they get to build in your city)
    - wood_spirit 22d ago
      They should be underground (that’s not shockingly expensive at the scale we talk about) and a net green-energy-driven power producer which they give away for free and pay property taxes. The list of things they could do that would be a cheap 1-2% of the total build and running costs to soften it are long.
      - ipdashc 22d ago
        > They should be underground (that’s not shockingly expensive at the scale we talk about) ... I'm not sure you realize the size of a modern hyperscale datacenter? They're pretty dang big. The amount of earthmoving to bury one would also be awful for the environment. There's really no need to complicate it that much, they're big warehouses full of computers, just shove them on some unused industrial land somewhere as is already being done. They should be required to pay for new renewable generation, I agree. That much is common sense.
lordgilman 22d ago
I suspect the authors of this paper would like to hear out your evidence for increasing energy prices https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.19777 https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.19777 In the United States at least there's been plenty of polling on why people oppose data centers. Consistently, it's water usage and water contamination fears, which is exactly what you see most often in social media and discussed online. I think a lot of high-minded rationalizations are just trying to dodge the embarrassing fact that people simply think data centers are draining municipal and natural water sources.
- MatekCopatek 22d ago
  What exactly are you getting at? Datacenters do use potable water from municipal sources for evaporative cooling. Are you claiming that's not true? Here's a recent source: https://pacinst.org/publication/how-much-water-do-data-centers-use-and-why-does-it-matter/ https://pacinst.org/publication/how-much-water-do-data-cente...
  - lokar 22d ago
    Yeah, it’s one thing when SV runs the Uber script (ignoring the law to build big enough to buy politicians) to hurt cab drivers. It’s very different when it’s your neighborhood.
  - jpalawaga 22d ago
    Some do, some use closed-loop systems that are essentially 'charge once'. higher energy use, but less water
    - asciimike 22d ago
      Not sure why this is getting downvoted, most of the new facilities (e.g. Stargate) are running closed loop systems. PUE goes up a bit if you have to use chillers, but ultimately it's faster/easier to build a large facility in a closed loop fashion than get water (permitting, treatment, etc.). NVIDIA pushing 45C inlet temps is to allow facilities to run dry coolers instead of chillers and make this even easier! Two phase cooling (required above ~3kW TDP) would eliminate water use in the secondary loop (if not the primary, eventually).
lisp2240 22d ago
Even worse some data centers have been caught running on diesel generators even in places where that is illegal. People are sick of tech companies bribing their way out of any accountability.
- blooalien 22d ago
  > Even worse some data centers have been caught running on diesel generators even in places where that is illegal. Yeah, Elon's a big fan of this tactic.
  - no-name-here 22d ago
    Source for the above claim, although it was actually methane gas turbines: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/15/elon-musk-xai-datacenter-memphis https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/15/elon-musk... > A US regulator ruled on Thursday that Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company had acted illegally by using dozens of methane gas turbines to power huge datacenters in Tennessee. > xAI has been fighting for a year and a half over truck-sized gas turbines the company had parked near its Colossus 1 and 2 facilities, arguing to local authorities that the electricity-generating turbines were exempt from requirements for air quality permits.
iamnothere 22d ago
It won’t necessarily impact local energy prices significantly. Some facilities build gas turbine generators, but these cause the noise that neighbors complain about. Gas isn’t as bad about pollution (except CO2) but you don’t want to live next door to a plant either. Also, adding a few data centers to a large grid shouldn’t bump up the energy prices, it’s only when you add many across the area. This is difficult to pin down because if one side of a region builds many data centers without their own power generation, the whole region could see eventual price increases. Fortunately most (all?) states regulate utility price increases, but still you don’t want to max out the price bump year after year. It’s hard to discuss because different facilities have different configurations, and the local impact depends on that plus local characteristics. Given the externalities of large facilities like this, impacted neighbors should definitely get a vote. Maybe we need a standard to define the impact radius based on the facility characteristics. This would add transparency and make it easier for people to decide without FUD and distortion. Unfortunately I don’t have much confidence in anyone coming up with such a standard without altering it to benefit their side, now that it’s become a political football.
sarjann 22d ago
And if they can't give capacity, they should maybe be required to give a kind of "call option" or hedge locals energy prices linked to regular inflation.
slibhb 22d ago
That's not the main issue at all. I'm baffled where you got that idea. Also, I live in Northern Virginia where we have tons of data centers, and energy prices have not spiked.
- estearum 22d ago
  Northern Virginia has tons of data centers because it had massive amounts of excess energy capacity. That is now being consumed and now Loudon County will also start engaging in electricity price wars with data centers. New regulations to segregate markets is supposed to kick in on Jan 1 2027, in fact.
- rconti 22d ago
  Wow, you have insanely, enviably cheap power. But also, it seems to have increased in price quite a bit lately. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APUS35A72610 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APUS35A72610
blooalien 22d ago
There's also the water usage, which time and time again they lie blatantly about, and they choose to want to often build these things in heavily populated drought-stressed areas for some foolish reason. And then you got clowns like Musk wantin' to build 'em entirely powered by dirty generators instead of any form of clean energy (which, I mean, if you're buildin' in drought-stressed sunny areas, why not some variant of solar, right?). S'okay. Facts and reality don't matter. Everything's peachy-keen, folks. Just wander on by and downvote reality and it'll magically go away... :sigh:
JKCalhoun 22d ago
Just a man on the street here—I sense it's more a backlash against tech-bros in general. People are seeing the world getting worse from tech and they're taking their pitchforks to the data centers and Flock cameras. (Of course I might simply be projecting.)
- blooalien 22d ago
  > I sense it's more a backlash against tech-bros in general. I can almost guarantee there's a good bit of that also involved in addition to all the other concerns and issues folks also rightly have.
- ndsipa_pomu 21d ago
  Not to disagree, but I suspect there wouldn't be such a backlash if the same people were building parks/forests/playgrounds etc. There are valid issues around datacentres although they might be getting bad press because of their association with tech-bros.
slowmovintarget 22d ago
So not the massive Chinese bot farm (200K +) launching anti-datacenter propaganda campaigns? It's just the green energy concern? ("Spiking local prices" was one of the propaganda talking points.) These new AI data centers are now built with their own power generation capacity. They're too electricity hungry to be supplied by the local grid, requiring megawatts to gigawatts of generation. If they're grid-connected at all (for training / inference racks + cooling) it is secondary supplementation. There is a concerted effort by foreign governments to slow down American progress in fielding AI capability. Attempts to generate civil unrest and propaganda against $new_thing are included in this.
- BigTTYGothGF 22d ago
  Ah, the good old "outside agitators" canard. > These new AI data centers are now built with their own power generation capacity And now you've got all the noise and pollution from that to deal with.
  - slowmovintarget 22d ago
    Some of the data centers build out solar, most are natural gas turbines. The outside agitators are in the news. The U.S. just happens to be a little more vulnerable to "straight to the people" propaganda campaigns.
    - bothers 22d ago
      Propaganda, which the largest corporations on earth, including news media behemoths, would never, ever stoop to. Right?
ifwinterco 22d ago
Also Sam, Dario et al have constantly (like literally, every single week at least) been telling us that AI is going to make all of us unemployable and have to live on welfare. Is it any wonder people hear that and go "hmm, no thanks" when the prospect of a massive whirring data centre next to their house is raised? The SV LLM crowd know a lot about LLM psychology but seemingly very little about human psychology
- adventured 22d ago
  They've fired up the same irrational hordes that brought us flat earthing, anti-vax, and 5G Covid. It's just another parade of extreme ignorance. And yes, the SF crowd is comically oblivious to what they're dealing with, ivory tower style. They're detached from the great unwashed masses. It's not that they don't know anything about human psychology. They don't care about those people or their concerns, historically. And that's what is coming out in this interfacing with the broader public.
  - daveguy 22d ago
    Opposition to AI data centers is completely rational, which is why both liberal and conservative folks are against it. These data centers are being forced on communities with soon-to-be-former leaders agreeing to nondisclosure agreements. They raise electricity prices. They are being slapped together with poor water recycling, and noisy diesel generators that pollute. The data centers for AI use a lot more resources than traditional ones. And the tech oligarchs think they can ram rush these things through, but they can't. People are sick of the lack of transparency. They're doing it all wrong to save a buck and a minute.
  - masfuerte 22d ago
    Ignorant? Do enlightened people want to live next door to noisy data centres?
  - scared_together 22d ago
    The comparisons to anti-vax and flat earth are absurd. And what exactly is the benefit to you to having a data centre specifically in the area you live? Seems to me that far from “irrational hordes”, the protestors are standing up for their interests above the interests of the AI companies.
altcognito 22d ago
Companies are content to charge more in the short term to pay for the upgrades on the backs of the current subscribers as opposed to just charging the people for whom the extra load is desired. Then these big buyers go ahead and pay 50% of what everyone else is paying.
OroPla 22d ago
> When you drop a data center into an area, energy prices will spike Why is that? Where I live my energy bill is a fixed cost. It's a super expensive fixed cost, since I'm living in Germany, but it is fixed none the less. It increases year by year because all costs only go up, but it remains completely unaffected by unrelated infrastructure being built around where I live. I've been to a data center before due to work and my impression of the place was really good. It's kinda invisible from the outside, everything is extremely clean. There's no noise on the outside and the excess heat is used to get people cheap warm water or something like that. I'm quite confused why people suddenly hate on them. Feels like I'm missing a whole lot of context.
- muddi900 22d ago
  Unless the German government is subsidizing or fixing the cost, that is not possible. Infrastructure requires new capacity to be build, which requires capacity payments.
  - OroPla 22d ago
    So you can't just build things in Germany. Even if you just want to build a structure on your property. You need to get government approval first. Which can take years. You won't get approval if whatever you want to build would impact things that way, meaning before you can build or even expand something like a data center you have to make sure the capacity is there or pay yourself to build it or pay to get a direct line from outside the city. Either way, other people won't need to pay more because of it.
Taikonerd 22d ago
> Really the main issue [is] ... energy production I know that's what the rhetoric focuses on, but is it the real issue? The people I know personally who are against "data centers" are really just against AI, period. "It takes jobs from artists, it's going to take my job, it's going to enrich a handful of oligarchs," etc. I suspect that even if some magical breakthrough meant that AI usage could grow and grow without building a single new data center, these guys would still oppose AI. And understandably so! "I'm worried that AI will take my job" is a reasonable worry, for many jobs! But I feel like "data centers" is, for many people, a pretext.

running101 22d ago

Or the fact everyone's utility bills are going up.

simondotau 22d ago
In part due to rising global prices of energy resources, which affect local markets and non-oil markets due to the (partial) fungibility of energy and the global nature of marketplaces.

VoodooJuJu 22d ago

[dead]

nxm 22d ago

That includes nuclear power, correct?

triceratops 22d ago
Can they build it safely as fast as the data center it's meant to power? Full steam ahead then.
- postalrat 22d ago
  It can be a little later. Your requirements is like demanding nobody can buy a house unless they have pay they entire amount upfront.
  - AndrewDucker 22d ago
    People do not believe big companies when they say "I'll deal with the externalities a little later."
  - triceratops 22d ago
    So then does the data center compensate local residents for their higher power bills today? Until the new capacity comes online? > Your requirements is like demanding nobody can buy a house unless they have pay they entire amount upfront. No it's like demanding your new neighbors aren't forced to lend you money for your purchase - which is entirely reasonable. If you need money, get it from the bank. The top-level comment explains it already: "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."
  - no-name-here 22d ago
    It typically takes 11-12 years for a nuclear plant to get built including planning and construction [1]. Is the idea that we'd build the data centers now, and finish the nuclear plants to power them 11-12 years from now? https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Typical-timeline-of-a-nuclear-plant-construction-and-start-up-project-Source-IAEA_fig5_304660691 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Typical-timeline-of-a-nu...
    - leonidasrup 22d ago
      For wind turbine project from design and planning to operational use-takes approximately 4-7 years. An offshore wind turbine project requires about 7-10 years. https://jmhpower.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-wind-turbine/ https://jmhpower.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-wind-t...
      - triceratops 22d ago
        > For wind turbine project from design and planning to operational use-takes approximately 4-7 years. That's still better than 11-12 years. How long does a solar farm take? If residents' opposition is rooted in higher power prices, data centers could just pay extra instead until the new capacity comes online. Seems like a cheap way to pay off opposition. > An offshore wind turbine project requires about 7-10 years. Given this article is about Pennsylvania, it'll probably take millions of years.
- leonidasrup 22d ago
  Some older nuclear power plants are been commissioned back into production: Three Mile Island "2027 – Nuclear Regulatory Commission to decide whether to issue operating license to Constellation Energy, with the decision expected in May. If granted, Constellation expects to bring the reactor back online later in the year." https://www.witf.org/2026/07/28/three-mile-island-reactor-restart-progresses-through-environmental-review-public-comments/ https://www.witf.org/2026/07/28/three-mile-island-reactor-re... Michigan’s Palisades nuclear power plant https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/nuclear/americas-first-nuclear-plant-restart https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/nuclear/americas-first-... Duane Arnold Energy Center in Iowa https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/nextera-energy-partners-with-google-restart-iowa-nuclear-plant-2025-10-27/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/nextera-energy-partn... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duane_Arnold_Energy_Center#Restart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duane_Arnold_Energy_Center#Res...
  - triceratops 22d ago
    If electricity bills are steady or falling they should have no trouble convincing voters. Nothing to worry about.
- bluGill 22d ago
  You don't need to build them. You can just not retire, or unretire one. Though we really should get better at building nuclear power plants. I'm think more of small ones to power ships though, not land based ones. Ships are one of the few places where oil/coal are used that there are not realistic renewable alternatives.
mschuster91 22d ago
Nuclear power takes 10-20 years to build from scratch.
- leonidasrup 22d ago
  Median build time for 1 GW nuclear power plant in Japan was 1721 days (4.7 years), first concrete to grid connection. https://x.com/GrantChalmers/status/1422472474487263233 https://x.com/GrantChalmers/status/1422472474487263233
  - mschuster91 22d ago
    [dead]
  - no-name-here 22d ago
    1. The 2 reactors under construction [1 > CONSTRUCTION] are expected to take 20 years and >20 years respectively [2][3]. 2. Nuclear Safety Commission Chairman Haruki Madarame told a parliamentary inquiry that "Japan's atomic safety rules are inferior to global standards and left the country unprepared for the Fukushima nuclear disaster". There were flaws in, and lax enforcement of, the safety rules governing Japanese nuclear power companies. [4 (Bloomberg: "Nuclear Safety Chief Says Lax Rules Led to Fukushima Crisis")] 3. Additionally, your source is from more than 5 years ago; in those additional >5 years, neither of the 2 under-construction Japan plants (started in 2006 and 2010) have finished, and 1 is not expected until 2030 (I couldn't find an expected date for the other). 4. The phase you mentioned is a relatively small amount (~1/3) of a nuclear reactor's total startup timeline. [6] 5. Japan was the fastest country from your 2021 source (before taking into account that current JP builds are taking 20+ years). 6. The last Japan reactor to go online was in the 2000s [1 > OPERATION]. [1] https://cnpp.iaea.org/public/countries/JP/profile/preview https://cnpp.iaea.org/public/countries/JP/profile/preview [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%8Cma_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%8Cma_Nuclear_Power_Plant [3] https://pris-stats.iaea.org/reactor/862 https://pris-stats.iaea.org/reactor/862 [4] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-02-16/nuclear-safety-chief-says-lax-rules-led-to-fukushima-disaster https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-02-16/nuclear-s... [5] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Typical-timeline-of-a-nuclear-plant-construction-and-start-up-project-Source-IAEA_fig5_304660691 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Typical-timeline-of-a-nu...
no-name-here 22d ago
I'm fine with any power source, but all sources should include all lifetime externality costs (including for fossil/nuclear/renewable): * Externality costs for items like pollution * Any required insurance cost during their lifetime (not subsidized) * An up-front bond or similar to cover final decommissioning and any required long-term storage costs (again, for fossil/renewable/nuclear)
sidewndr46 22d ago
By the time nuclear power were to come online in the US, most of these datacenters would be idled and possibly even demolished.

sschueller 22d 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.

deleted 22d ago
[deleted]

redwood 22d ago

No a big part is that the buildings are ugly and transform the character of a place that folks grew up in. Maybe focus should be put on beautifying these buildings in some way

wood_spirit 22d ago
Even if invisible they would not be a popular neighbour because they are a very overt reminder to the poor people around them how uneven the wealth and political power distribution is between them and the tech exec owners?
- bluGill 22d ago
  They should be popular - they pay property taxes to the local schools without taking much from the community at all. (note that I'm coming out against the all too common tax breaks that they get to build in your city)
  - wood_spirit 22d ago
    They should be underground (that’s not shockingly expensive at the scale we talk about) and a net green-energy-driven power producer which they give away for free and pay property taxes. The list of things they could do that would be a cheap 1-2% of the total build and running costs to soften it are long.
    - ipdashc 22d ago
      > They should be underground (that’s not shockingly expensive at the scale we talk about) ... I'm not sure you realize the size of a modern hyperscale datacenter? They're pretty dang big. The amount of earthmoving to bury one would also be awful for the environment. There's really no need to complicate it that much, they're big warehouses full of computers, just shove them on some unused industrial land somewhere as is already being done. They should be required to pay for new renewable generation, I agree. That much is common sense.

lordgilman 22d ago

I suspect the authors of this paper would like to hear out your evidence for increasing energy prices https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.19777 https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.19777 In the United States at least there's been plenty of polling on why people oppose data centers. Consistently, it's water usage and water contamination fears, which is exactly what you see most often in social media and discussed online. I think a lot of high-minded rationalizations are just trying to dodge the embarrassing fact that people simply think data centers are draining municipal and natural water sources.

MatekCopatek 22d ago
What exactly are you getting at? Datacenters do use potable water from municipal sources for evaporative cooling. Are you claiming that's not true? Here's a recent source: https://pacinst.org/publication/how-much-water-do-data-centers-use-and-why-does-it-matter/ https://pacinst.org/publication/how-much-water-do-data-cente...
- lokar 22d ago
  Yeah, it’s one thing when SV runs the Uber script (ignoring the law to build big enough to buy politicians) to hurt cab drivers. It’s very different when it’s your neighborhood.
- jpalawaga 22d ago
  Some do, some use closed-loop systems that are essentially 'charge once'. higher energy use, but less water
  - asciimike 22d ago
    Not sure why this is getting downvoted, most of the new facilities (e.g. Stargate) are running closed loop systems. PUE goes up a bit if you have to use chillers, but ultimately it's faster/easier to build a large facility in a closed loop fashion than get water (permitting, treatment, etc.). NVIDIA pushing 45C inlet temps is to allow facilities to run dry coolers instead of chillers and make this even easier! Two phase cooling (required above ~3kW TDP) would eliminate water use in the secondary loop (if not the primary, eventually).

lisp2240 22d ago

Even worse some data centers have been caught running on diesel generators even in places where that is illegal. People are sick of tech companies bribing their way out of any accountability.

blooalien 22d ago
> Even worse some data centers have been caught running on diesel generators even in places where that is illegal. Yeah, Elon's a big fan of this tactic.
- no-name-here 22d ago
  Source for the above claim, although it was actually methane gas turbines: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/15/elon-musk-xai-datacenter-memphis https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/15/elon-musk... > A US regulator ruled on Thursday that Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company had acted illegally by using dozens of methane gas turbines to power huge datacenters in Tennessee. > xAI has been fighting for a year and a half over truck-sized gas turbines the company had parked near its Colossus 1 and 2 facilities, arguing to local authorities that the electricity-generating turbines were exempt from requirements for air quality permits.

iamnothere 22d ago

It won’t necessarily impact local energy prices significantly. Some facilities build gas turbine generators, but these cause the noise that neighbors complain about. Gas isn’t as bad about pollution (except CO2) but you don’t want to live next door to a plant either. Also, adding a few data centers to a large grid shouldn’t bump up the energy prices, it’s only when you add many across the area. This is difficult to pin down because if one side of a region builds many data centers without their own power generation, the whole region could see eventual price increases. Fortunately most (all?) states regulate utility price increases, but still you don’t want to max out the price bump year after year. It’s hard to discuss because different facilities have different configurations, and the local impact depends on that plus local characteristics. Given the externalities of large facilities like this, impacted neighbors should definitely get a vote. Maybe we need a standard to define the impact radius based on the facility characteristics. This would add transparency and make it easier for people to decide without FUD and distortion. Unfortunately I don’t have much confidence in anyone coming up with such a standard without altering it to benefit their side, now that it’s become a political football.

sarjann 22d ago

And if they can't give capacity, they should maybe be required to give a kind of "call option" or hedge locals energy prices linked to regular inflation.

slibhb 22d ago

That's not the main issue at all. I'm baffled where you got that idea. Also, I live in Northern Virginia where we have tons of data centers, and energy prices have not spiked.

estearum 22d ago
Northern Virginia has tons of data centers because it had massive amounts of excess energy capacity. That is now being consumed and now Loudon County will also start engaging in electricity price wars with data centers. New regulations to segregate markets is supposed to kick in on Jan 1 2027, in fact.
rconti 22d ago
Wow, you have insanely, enviably cheap power. But also, it seems to have increased in price quite a bit lately. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APUS35A72610 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APUS35A72610

blooalien 22d ago

There's also the water usage, which time and time again they lie blatantly about, and they choose to want to often build these things in heavily populated drought-stressed areas for some foolish reason. And then you got clowns like Musk wantin' to build 'em entirely powered by dirty generators instead of any form of clean energy (which, I mean, if you're buildin' in drought-stressed sunny areas, why not some variant of solar, right?). S'okay. Facts and reality don't matter. Everything's peachy-keen, folks. Just wander on by and downvote reality and it'll magically go away... :sigh:

JKCalhoun 22d ago

Just a man on the street here—I sense it's more a backlash against tech-bros in general. People are seeing the world getting worse from tech and they're taking their pitchforks to the data centers and Flock cameras. (Of course I might simply be projecting.)

blooalien 22d ago
> I sense it's more a backlash against tech-bros in general. I can almost guarantee there's a good bit of that also involved in addition to all the other concerns and issues folks also rightly have.
ndsipa_pomu 21d ago
Not to disagree, but I suspect there wouldn't be such a backlash if the same people were building parks/forests/playgrounds etc. There are valid issues around datacentres although they might be getting bad press because of their association with tech-bros.

slowmovintarget 22d ago

So not the massive Chinese bot farm (200K +) launching anti-datacenter propaganda campaigns? It's just the green energy concern? ("Spiking local prices" was one of the propaganda talking points.) These new AI data centers are now built with their own power generation capacity. They're too electricity hungry to be supplied by the local grid, requiring megawatts to gigawatts of generation. If they're grid-connected at all (for training / inference racks + cooling) it is secondary supplementation. There is a concerted effort by foreign governments to slow down American progress in fielding AI capability. Attempts to generate civil unrest and propaganda against $new_thing are included in this.

BigTTYGothGF 22d ago
Ah, the good old "outside agitators" canard. > These new AI data centers are now built with their own power generation capacity And now you've got all the noise and pollution from that to deal with.
- slowmovintarget 22d ago
  Some of the data centers build out solar, most are natural gas turbines. The outside agitators are in the news. The U.S. just happens to be a little more vulnerable to "straight to the people" propaganda campaigns.
  - bothers 22d ago
    Propaganda, which the largest corporations on earth, including news media behemoths, would never, ever stoop to. Right?

ifwinterco 22d ago

Also Sam, Dario et al have constantly (like literally, every single week at least) been telling us that AI is going to make all of us unemployable and have to live on welfare. Is it any wonder people hear that and go "hmm, no thanks" when the prospect of a massive whirring data centre next to their house is raised? The SV LLM crowd know a lot about LLM psychology but seemingly very little about human psychology

adventured 22d ago
They've fired up the same irrational hordes that brought us flat earthing, anti-vax, and 5G Covid. It's just another parade of extreme ignorance. And yes, the SF crowd is comically oblivious to what they're dealing with, ivory tower style. They're detached from the great unwashed masses. It's not that they don't know anything about human psychology. They don't care about those people or their concerns, historically. And that's what is coming out in this interfacing with the broader public.
- daveguy 22d ago
  Opposition to AI data centers is completely rational, which is why both liberal and conservative folks are against it. These data centers are being forced on communities with soon-to-be-former leaders agreeing to nondisclosure agreements. They raise electricity prices. They are being slapped together with poor water recycling, and noisy diesel generators that pollute. The data centers for AI use a lot more resources than traditional ones. And the tech oligarchs think they can ram rush these things through, but they can't. People are sick of the lack of transparency. They're doing it all wrong to save a buck and a minute.
- masfuerte 22d ago
  Ignorant? Do enlightened people want to live next door to noisy data centres?
- scared_together 22d ago
  The comparisons to anti-vax and flat earth are absurd. And what exactly is the benefit to you to having a data centre specifically in the area you live? Seems to me that far from “irrational hordes”, the protestors are standing up for their interests above the interests of the AI companies.

altcognito 22d ago

Companies are content to charge more in the short term to pay for the upgrades on the backs of the current subscribers as opposed to just charging the people for whom the extra load is desired. Then these big buyers go ahead and pay 50% of what everyone else is paying.

OroPla 22d ago

> When you drop a data center into an area, energy prices will spike Why is that? Where I live my energy bill is a fixed cost. It's a super expensive fixed cost, since I'm living in Germany, but it is fixed none the less. It increases year by year because all costs only go up, but it remains completely unaffected by unrelated infrastructure being built around where I live. I've been to a data center before due to work and my impression of the place was really good. It's kinda invisible from the outside, everything is extremely clean. There's no noise on the outside and the excess heat is used to get people cheap warm water or something like that. I'm quite confused why people suddenly hate on them. Feels like I'm missing a whole lot of context.

muddi900 22d ago
Unless the German government is subsidizing or fixing the cost, that is not possible. Infrastructure requires new capacity to be build, which requires capacity payments.
- OroPla 22d ago
  So you can't just build things in Germany. Even if you just want to build a structure on your property. You need to get government approval first. Which can take years. You won't get approval if whatever you want to build would impact things that way, meaning before you can build or even expand something like a data center you have to make sure the capacity is there or pay yourself to build it or pay to get a direct line from outside the city. Either way, other people won't need to pay more because of it.

Taikonerd 22d ago

> Really the main issue [is] ... energy production I know that's what the rhetoric focuses on, but is it the real issue? The people I know personally who are against "data centers" are really just against AI, period. "It takes jobs from artists, it's going to take my job, it's going to enrich a handful of oligarchs," etc. I suspect that even if some magical breakthrough meant that AI usage could grow and grow without building a single new data center, these guys would still oppose AI. And understandably so! "I'm worried that AI will take my job" is a reasonable worry, for many jobs! But I feel like "data centers" is, for many people, a pretext.