Southern states have more republicans so it's easier to sell public land or draw this kind of contracts without a massive community backlash

Politics means putting job creating infrastructure projects in red states to curry favor with Republican demographics.

1. Cheap natural resource 2. Fiber connectivity 3. Low population density 4. Favorable regulatory environment

Depending on how far north you mean, you lose all or all but one of the above.

Nuclear is the most expensive form of clean energy. It is likely to bankrupt at least one company.

When Finland contracted with France to build their latest reactor, they wisely had a fixed price contract where the French company would pay for const overruns. At groundbreaking in 2005, they planned for a 2009 completion. In 2016 it bankrupted Areva, with the French government owned EDG saving parts of the company crucial to the nation. It wasn't completed u tip 2023:

https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/domestic/2...

When the US last decided to build nuclear, Westinghouse AP1000s, two in South Carolina and two in Georgia, it resulted in the bankruptcy on Westinghouse, putting all of Toshiba, its owner, at risk:

https://www.csis.org/analysis/westinghouses-bankruptcy-and-i...

The two South Carolina reactors were abandoned at the cost of a substantial fraction of the build cost, in the billions, and utility executives went to jail for deception about it. Georgia finished its two reactors, but only by creating some of the most expensive electricity out there today.

Storage and renewables are cheaper, faster to deploy, and work really really really well in Texas and Arizona. Despite nearly free natural gas in Texas due its state as a by-product of oil extraction, most of the new electricity grid assets in Texas are wind, storage, and solar, and that's independent third party investors making those choice in the grid to make money, as Texas has perhaps the "freest" electricity market in the United States when it comes to who is allowed to build grid assets and make money off them.

If the far north places have hydro that's already built and not being used, that makes sense for data centers. But new nuclear is not a serious technology, it exists mostly based on vibes.

Perhaps the extra cost in freeze proofing certain systems and the inability to rely on evaporative cooling techniques? The availability of power in the winter might be a problem too when northern home's power and energy usage all ramp up. In the summer you need nearly the same amount of capacity for cooling as the south so there isn't much savings there.

Arizona is conducive to abundant solar power, so that'd be a good reason to build there. Similar deal here in Nevada (with the added bonus of Nevada being a giant blob of geothermal heat, further driving renewable energy supply and therefore datacenter attractiveness).

Traditionally you cared alot about internet connectivity and latency to your customer base. I imagine Texas comes out a lot better on that front.

That probably matters a lot less for AI.

Google claims that 10% of its power goes to non-computing overhead. Even if that were 0 somewhere else, ok how much more expensive is the power in that area, probably more than 11%. And I don't know how much they spend on power to begin with, relative to the other costs that probably go up.

* good access to power (this might not mean the cheapest always, but actually getting to it.

* easy permitting

* lots of space

Unions. Northeastern states expect that you will use union labor to build your projects or they will shut you down.

Pennsylvania, for example, was one of the few places to take Walmart to task for employing illegal labor.

Texas and Arizona are notoriously anti-union and anti-resident/pro-corporation.

If done correctly there’s a lot of free solar energy in sunny states.

Evap cooling can't be beat