- Utah will be home to a new 40,000-acre data center
- The data center will use more power than the entire state
- The power will be supplied by natural gas-burning turbine generators
The Box Elder County Commission in Utah has approved a massive new data center that, when completed, will be twice the size of Manhattan and consume more electricity than the entire state currently does.
The Stratos AI data center will occupy more than 40,000 acres (62 sq miles) in northwestern Utah and consume 9GW of power.
Nearly 4,000 local residents and environmentalists have protested strongly against the proposed data center, pointing out that the data center will draw water and raise temperatures in an already drought-stricken region.
Data center raises ecological concerns
Kevin O’Leary, the venture capitalist and Shark Tank star, backs the project, and has made several statements in an attempt to allay concerns about the development.
speaks to Fox Newssaid O’Leary, “I don’t think there’s a bigger site in the world than this. It shows the Chinese and the rest of the world that we’re not messing around, we’re going to get this done, move it forward and provide the computing power to our AI companies that defend the country.”
The Chinese are probably not the main concern of those opposed to the project. Many are concerned about the Great Salt Lake ecosystem, which is already threatened by a recurring drought and agricultural water diversions. The data center will likely divert more water from the lake unless the developers plan to source cooling water from outside the county.
“We don’t want to drain the Great Salt Lake. That’s ridiculous. We want to create incremental jobs,” O’Leary said in a post on X. Evidence from other projects suggests local job growth from data centers is short-term and almost entirely construction-based.
To those concerned about energy use at the site, O’Leary said, “We’re building power from the ground up, from the pipeline. We’re going to burn it with turbines, cleanly.” For the uninitiated, natural gas is a fossil fuel, and burning it produces pollutants that have contributed to man-made climate change.
Gas turbines also present another, lesser-known phenomenon. Each turbine works like a commercial jet engine, but instead produces electricity. Since the data center will have an energy consumption of 9 GW when completed, the campus will likely be as tall as a large airport. In several cases, the infrasound produced by data centers has made local residents sick.
O’Leary has also claimed in a video on X that those opposed to the data center are “professional protesters” who are paid to object to the project.
A group called the Box Elder Accountability Referendum has filed for a referendum on the decision to build the data center. If the referendum is signed by the 5,422 registered voters in the county within 45 days, another vote will be held in November.
“Instead of talking to us, Kevin O’Leary went on social media and said we were out of state, paid protesters and we don’t want people from out of state making decisions for us,” said Brenna Williams, lead sponsor of the referendum. “The only thing he’s right about is that we don’t want him, an out-of-state billionaire, making decisions for us.”
Via The Guardian
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