I can only speak of data centres in my local area. One development will use 1GW+ (at least 10%+ of the whole cities power supply in one building) and it isn't t

I can only speak of data centres in my local area. One development will use 1GW+ (at least 10%+ of the whole cities power supply in one building) and it isn't the first nor last to be promoted. We are struggling, even with incentives, to build the power required to keep even the city running with power yet alone these data centres. Electricity costs have risen quite substantially locally over the last few years (40-50%) so the commodity model you mention doesn't work - it is harder to ship electricity than say as per your example shoes especially at this scale. Data centres also prefer being near major cities due to latency. This means to deliver the amount of power required there needs to be huge upgrades to infrastructure (long distance power lines) just to provide for data centres. Who does that? At the moment for many cities it is the taxpayer who will fork higher electricity bills for infra upgrades for a data centre few of them care or need. On the water issue - who will give money to residents? The taxpayer? Just to subsidize data centres/AI construction? Water is also unlike electricity more scarce especially potable water. Do we build more dams? Desalination? Main line piping? Taxpayer funds that again? To the average joe blow: I'm paying more taxes, for data centres I don't want, to pay more for electricity and have water shortages, for something that will take my job or someone's job I know. Not a great trade. There's a lot of negative externalities to data centres due to their sheer scale to the point where they compete with households and other industries. My view is that the data centres should pay and compensate the community for those should they use grid or community based infra. The income could actually long term could help the community get a dividend from data centre construction as well.