The thing is it's not the data centers that are actually the issue. It's the power.
Gas turbines are loud! And look at the news--many incidents of it being even louder than they had permits for.
And the reality is politicians never make new development bear the utility infrastructure cost of the development. Development ends up raising costs for the people already living there.
I worked near a datacenter, and it never made any discernible noise. There were portable gas turbines a few miles away, installed to expand a city-owned power plant, because the NIMBYism process to approve a real power plants meant that we didn't have enough, and the only way to prevent rolling blackouts was to install temporary power plants that didn't need environmental approval.
A gas turbine isn't a normal part of a data center operations, and the only reason the need them is when NIMBYists make it difficult to get enough stable power to keep critical infrastructure running.
And note the second part of what I said--developers never bear the full cost of their infrastructure needs. Yeah, I'm going to oppose expanding a powerplant for AI, both because I don't want to pay for their generators and because I expect they will not be around, leaving us with the bill.
Pay *up front* for the expansion, I'm not going to object.
Comments
It's just NIMBYism, which itself is usually justified through fake science.
There's honest to goodness people who think we shouldn't disturb space rocks, because they will no longer be in their pristine natural state.
It isn't NIMBY.
The thing is it's not the data centers that are actually the issue. It's the power.
Gas turbines are loud! And look at the news--many incidents of it being even louder than they had permits for.
And the reality is politicians never make new development bear the utility infrastructure cost of the development. Development ends up raising costs for the people already living there.
I worked near a datacenter, and it never made any discernible noise. There were portable gas turbines a few miles away, installed to expand a city-owned power plant, because the NIMBYism process to approve a real power plants meant that we didn't have enough, and the only way to prevent rolling blackouts was to install temporary power plants that didn't need environmental approval.
A gas turbine isn't a normal part of a data center operations, and the only reason the need them is when NIMBYists make it difficult to get enough stable power to keep critical infrastructure running.
Or because the wires don't support the demand.
And note the second part of what I said--developers never bear the full cost of their infrastructure needs. Yeah, I'm going to oppose expanding a powerplant for AI, both because I don't want to pay for their generators and because I expect they will not be around, leaving us with the bill.
Pay *up front* for the expansion, I'm not going to object.