Data centres seem to show up everywhere in modern political discourse. They are presented by critics as examples of predatory capitalism at the expense of the natural world and residents in their proposed areas. As you would expect, then, it is common to see politicians in America (and the rest of the world) mounting resistant campaigns when billionaire developers come knocking.
However, since data centres often provide local areas with jobs and (often difficult to refuse) economic stimulus, it is common for these resistance measures to be mostly symbolic. Take Virginia’s popular, never-before-seen tax on data centre electricity consumption introduced in July: while it symbolically targets the industry to raise $600 million a year, legislators left in place a sales tax exemption on data centre equipment that is worth three times that amount (one of the US’s most generous exemptions).
This paints a picture that America’s data centre boom is inevitable and unyielding. Utah’s example, however, offers a compelling rebuttal.
The gargantuan data centre, known as the Stratos project, was set to cover 40,000 acres of desert brush and farmland in Box Elder County north of the Salt Lake. The project got its investment from celebrity billionaire Kevin O’Leary, known for the TV show Shark Tank, which alongside its vast size, added to the global publicity of the project.
The project promises to create jobs and investment for the state but residents in Utah have more complex concerns. The data centre would have consumed vast amounts of water and one Utah state university physicist even estimated that waste heat could raise nighttime temperatures by up to 28°F (15.6°C) at night. In a Box Elder County poll, just 30% of residents supported the project.
Public pushback against the project was organised, bipartisan, and overwhelming. Residents mounted legal challenges, sent in thousands of complaints to lawmakers, and organised a huge in person demonstration. The response produced real changes to the plans and consequences for legislators responsible.
Facing collective pressure, O’Leary chose to halve the project’s footprint to 20,000 acres and reduce energy consumption from 9 gigawatts to 7.5.
Furthermore, the Senate president J Stuart Adams lost his primary reelection bid with his role in advancing the project becoming a major campaign issue. Adams had spent 24 years in Utah’s state legislature and his policy on this specific issue became enough of an electoral liability to help him lose his post. Pressure also resulted in Governor Spencer Cox signing an executive order demanding careful environmental consideration and calling for major reforms to the approval process of these projects. Resistance to the project proves to the rest of the country that opposition to a data centre can have tangible results.
Ultimately, this is not an example of America rejecting data centres — if it was, the project would not be going ahead. But what it does show is that public pressure can challenge corporate power, and if it can happen in Utah then similar concessions can occur elsewhere.
Photo by Geoffrey Moffett on Unsplash
