To 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.)
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.)