alt Hacker NewsTo me, datacenters, especially for AI (which tolerates an extra hundred ms of latency quite well) seem like an unusual form of development. Many forms of development have similar downsides: they destroy green space, they can be noisy, they compete for energy resources [0], etc. On the flip side, though, most new developments add substantial value: jobs, tax revenue, increased industry around them, local availability of their outputs, etc.
Datacenters are weird: they come with the negatives (although, per unit energy consumption, they’re relatively innocuous), but they seem to be missing most of the regional benefits. They don’t create many jobs. They pay little in taxes. They don’t actually produce anything that makes anyone else want to further develop the surrounding area. Their outputs offer little benefit to the community that wouldn’t be provided nearly as well by a datacenter somewhere else.
So I actually get why it makes sense to support development but oppose new datacenters. Or to have an added tax on datacenters so that at least some economic benefit is captured.
As an interesting contrast, a colo facility is a bit different: I want to have colo datacenters near by so that I can use their services. But this isn’t what the new development is about.
[0] Some of which are finite in a given region or are preferable not to use. (But don’t forget that more energy use = increased production in the long term, which can be a very good thing.)
Replies
> Datacenters are weird
In the same way that most public utilities are: train stations, railway lines, airports, garbage dumps, sewage treatment plants, military bases and a hundred other things. The negatives are concentrated to the locality and everyone else reaps the benefits.
I get it if you wish to put a 99% self-sufficiency condition (water/power etc) but everything else reeks of luddism and nimbyism.
A warehouse or factory would have more jobs, but would also bring massive truck loads to the local roads and corresponding pollution. The low staffing of datacenters means that one they are built there is little transportation impact.
Why don't they pay much in taxes? hyperscalers are pretty profitable.
It's worse than that. Data centers aren't a net zero for the area, they're a net negative. They use up water, arguably pollute said water [1], they jack up the price of everybody's electricity (because everyone else ends up paying for the extra infrastructure), can cause pollution directly (eg xAI runs highly-polluting gas turbines in a city through a legal loophole of them being "mobile" [2]) and aren't the quiet, unseen facilities proponents make them out to be (eg [3]).
On top of all that they typically get massive subsidies and tax credits. Why? Because the DC might go somewhere else, allegedly. Where? Nobody wants it. Everybody knows the politicians approving all this are getting bought or just coerced.
I'd love to see a single example of where one of these data centers was welcomed by the community or somehow a net positive.
[1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy8gy7lv448o
[2]: https://earthjustice.org/case/xai-illegal-gas-power-plant-da...
[3]: https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/northern-virginia/n...
> they destroy green space
the law addresses exactly this. it greatly overtaxes datacenter in green spaces and lowers taxes in former industrial areas.
Regarding whether it's a good development drive... I can tell you, most companies could save a shitload of money by buying a few pallets of machines and racking them in a... datacenter.
I see our monthly AWS bill, I highly doubt we'd be spending that in datacenter bills.
I'm confused, do they really have such an impact? They are of course big and expensive, but surely most datacenters are relatively innocuous in terms pollution and general disruption to the area compared to any regular heavy-industry site, right? Please let me know if I'm wrong, I'm not sure.
EDIT: I do get it, it is mainly about local benefit not really about pollution or disruption, even if they are loud about that because it sounds better. Local municipalities should definitely charge significant land rents or zoning fees so that the community benefits. China has been very successful at this for decades.
EDIT: Very rough overview after some research, using Colossus 1 as reference, which is among the biggest GPU deployments. Not thoroughly verified, but it'll be around the right ballpark.
- Electricity: 150 MW live, with another 150 MW planned/studied. That is like adding a medium electric-arc steel mill or large chemical plant to the grid. A small standard power-plant can generate about that much.
- Land / space: About 217 acres and 785,000 sq ft. Footprint-wise, that is like a large factory campus or logistics park; much smaller than a mine, port, refinery, or industrial farm, but far beyond a normal commercial warehouse.
- Water: Roughly 1.3–3M gallons/day in public estimates. That is comparable to the consumptive water use of a small-to-mid steel plant or a large industrial cooling site; not refinery-scale, but locally significant.
- Air pollution: The servers are not the dirty part; the issue is on-site gas turbines/generators. That makes it more like a small gas peaker plant than a steel mill or chemical plant. Colossus 1 reportedly used up to 35 gas turbines before grid connection.
- Noise: Mainly cooling equipment, substations, batteries, turbines/generators. More like living near a substation or small power plant than near a mine, port, or metalworks.
- Traffic / logistics: Heavy during construction, then relatively light. Much less disruptive than a port, mine, farm, steel plant, or refinery, because there is no constant flow of ore, scrap, fuel, chemicals, crops, containers, or waste.
- Heat: Nearly all consumed electricity becomes heat. At 150–300 MW, the heat rejection is industrial-scale, closer to a small power station / large process plant than normal manufacturing.