- Utah to host new 40,000-acre data center
- The data center will consume more energy than the entire state
- Power will be provided by generating turbines that burn natural gas.
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 will consume more electricity than the entire state currently does.
The Stratos AI data center will occupy more than 40,000 acres (62 square miles) in northwest Utah and consume 9 GW of energy.
Nearly 4,000 local residents and environmentalists have strongly opposed the proposed data center, pointing out that the data center will draw water and raise temperatures in a region already affected by drought.
Data center raises ecological concerns
Kevin O’Leary, the venture capitalist and shark tank Star, supports the project and has made several statements in an attempt to calm concerns about the development.
talking to fox newsO’Leary said: “I don’t think there is a bigger site in the world than this. It shows the Chinese and the rest of the world that we are not playing around, that we are going to get it done, move forward and provide the computing power to our artificial intelligence companies that defend the country.”
The Chinese are probably not the biggest concern for those who oppose the project. Many are concerned about the Great Salt Lake ecosystem, which is already threatened by recurring drought and water diversions for agricultural purposes. The data center would likely divert more water from the lake, unless developers plan to source cooling water from outside the county.
“We’re not going to drain the Great Salt Lake. That’s ridiculous. We’re going to create incremental jobs,” O’Leary said in a post on X. Evidence from other projects suggests that local job growth from data centers is short-term and based almost exclusively on construction.
For those concerned about the site’s energy consumption, O’Leary said: “We are generating energy from scratch, from the pipeline. We will 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 a second, less well-known phenomenon. Each turbine works like a commercial jet engine, but instead produces electricity. As the data center will have a power consumption of 9 GW when completed, the campus will likely be as noisy as a large airport. In several cases, infrasound produced by data centers has made local residents sick.
O’Leary also claimed in a video on X that those opposed to the data center are “professional protesters” who are paid to oppose the project.
A group called Box Elder Accountability Referendum has called for a referendum on the decision to build the data center. If the referendum is signed by all 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 took to social media saying we were paid, out-of-state protesters, and we don’t want people from other states making decisions for us,” said Brenna Williams, the referendum’s lead sponsor. “The only thing he’s right about is that we don’t want him, a billionaire from another state, to make decisions for us.”
Through the guardian
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