alt Hacker NewsWealthy white exclave succeeds in using environmental justice language to keep cheap coal-fired power to themselves. Very American outcome.
Although I obviously don't care about Microsoft's outcome here, this was clearly a great site at the intersection of two transmission lines and with essentially infinite water resources.
The data center would have been built in this scene. https://www.google.com/maps/@42.8440852,-87.8474228,2445m/da...
Replies
One of the rare cases where nimbys can't do damage because the hyper scalers will (and are) building their data centers across MENA, South Asia and SEA where they're welcomed with generous tax breaks and incentives.
Sending kilobytes of text over thousands of miles is a lot easier than piping energy or housing across distance!
> The data center would have been built in this scene
You mean the carefully cropped photo of pristine rolling farmland in the article is in reality next door to a coal-fired power plant? Say it ain't so.
"a great site" -- you frame it like Microsoft was working for the public good
Some of us would like to keep our “infinite” water resources which actually aren’t infinite.
I live beneath two transmission lines (overlapping, I guess, but not intersecting) and would prefer no data centre built here. Why? Because it will provide me no benefit whatsoever, reduce my property value, and worsen my quality of life due to things like light pollution and noise.
If data centre operators would fix these things perhaps people would feel differently. For example - provide multi gigabit fibre Internet to everyone nearby.