Everything you’ve been wondering about data centers, explained

[00:00:00] elena: somebody drops you off at a parking at a at a car car max and they say the world is your oyster pick whatever you want you're probably going to pick the ferrari but if they say hey you have to cover the cost to your own car you might pick the ford fiesta and right now they're picking the lamborghini off our dime and it's time they pick the ford fiesta hi everyone today we're [00:00:25] logan: talking about one of the most hot button topics in tech today data centers that's right data centers tech companies are spending a fortune building the infrastructure to power ai but communities across america are pushing back a recent gallup poll found that seven in ten americans don't want a data center in their own community making this one of the rare issues that cuts across the political divide i'm joined by a panel of experts who are right in the middle of this debate we'll unpack why data centers have become so controversial what the real environmental impact is how politics is shaping the fight and whether it's actually possible to build them responsibly if you want to understand one of the biggest battles shaping the future of ai you're in the right place this is a long podcast you should listen to every bit of it let's get into it aaron logan elena and andy thanks for coming on thank you for having her thanks for having us on on that's how we do it um there's a lot to get into but i want to start with a very short answer from each of you um what was the moment when you knew data centers were becoming a national issue with political consequences and also a local [00:01:33] aaron: issue aaron you go first then logan elena and andy so it it began with me uh on a particular morning maybe 15 16 weeks ago where i woke up and i had 30 emails individual emails from the same community out of pennsylvania talking about data centers so anytime 30 people from the same community reach out to me i typically am like what's going on and it was data centers and to be honest with you i'm like i didn't know a whole lot about the data centers i knew some so i decided to look into it being the the person that i am i have to see the big picture so i thought gosh is this just one backyard and one city and one state so i created the map the brockovich data center.com and the first day when it crashed twice because of submissions i'm like oh my gosh what's going on out there and it didn't take but 72 hours for the map to populate very quickly with multiple reports coming in from every single state that blew me away and that's when i'm like oh my god what did i just step into right and you [00:02:42] logan: hadn't been paying attention to elon or the rest of what was happening in tennessee or anything like [00:02:47] aaron: that before that yes i had been watching that a little bit from completely a different perspective of it's a community and obviously the environmental contamination going on all right logan yeah for [00:03:01] andy: me it was um you know i'm i work at utah clean energy and i follow the the energy sector and what's going on with how new resources are being built out so i've been following the the build up of data centers for several years now but things really changed in a fundamental way for me here in utah with the the with the announcement and kind of the the pub the public explosion of interest in the stratos data center that was proposed kind of on the shores of the great salt lake that really uh it just kind kind of upended everything and all of the all of the um discussion about it it just it turned into this wild um um experience and so um the governor was involved and i it's kind of one of the things that really struck me was there was a there was a quote from one of the people there that said you know there's there's a lot of top-down follow leader culture here in utah but something fundamental has changed it's torches and pitchforks out here so that kind of quote that kind of sentiment really struck me and i was like wow and and now there's been some real political consequences from from that and i think we're still at the at the very beginning of that story great elena so i'm a native virginian and uh [00:04:21] elena: we uh bought our dream 10 acres here in the royal crescent and we built our dream home we couldn't afford to pay anybody to do it we did it ourselves and i became very engaged in the rural crescent and land you so i um and by nature now grassroots organizer in 2014 for the first time a transmission line project was going to cross my property and when i realized it was for a secretive amazon data center campus that had our local leaders signing ndas and our economic development department i was like oh no oh no you are not and so um at my kitchen table where i'm sitting now i formed the coalition to protect prince we encounter and in 2021 when the digital gateway the largest project in the world was proposed next to the manassas national battle park on hallowed ground in the headwaters of a regional drinking water supply we knew something catastrophically was going to happen we could tell that our democratically elected board was ignoring us and um what i said in a zoom meeting like this to a data center organization was if qts that uh had just been purchased by blackstone and compass persisted the backlash would not just be against them that it would be against the entire industry [00:05:42] logan: and so here we are here we are here we are okay uh andy now you are a public official so i am [00:05:50] Speaker 5: uh i am you know it's a it's a conversation that that um is newer for for us um we certainly have had you know small data centers uh as redundancies and we have insurance companies we have our state government they have big computer rooms that were redundancies always called data centers it was never really a big deal it was just a redundancy um and uh you know we have a proposal that we had a proposal that came here which i'm happy to talk about where we did pretty much everything that i think that that you all are talking about in terms of make them pay amongst many other things um and when it came out it was you know there were there were some people who who were who wanted more details but then about an hour and a quarter down the road from us a hyperscale was proposed in saline township and that was when that you asked when do we know that's when i knew um that's when whoever said it the the torches and pitchforks came out um and it was you know no hyperscale and then that brought into into lansing no [00:06:50] logan: small scale no nothing um so it had reverberations or things that were perfectly fine and done in the [00:06:56] Speaker 5: correct way we and we think so i mean i think so but certainly others would disagree and i don't want to speak for others but we think that we had done everything that i mean we were they were paying for for uh community benefits for what we call pennies for power they were paying for all the infrastructure they were building infrastructure giving it to us we said you know on day one we said you will never get a tax incentive from us and it was all right this was not ai this was cloud cloud-based but again like what you said this is this is pitchforks and torches and and people came here and said we don't want it here either even if it's a smaller scale one we don't want to hear either and it's and it's [00:07:30] logan: done that we pay for it so the the anger had shifted i want to get into the disclosures of public officials that um elena was just talking about in a second but um let's level set hyperscale data centers facilities that house computing infrastructure for companies like google and microsoft existed as you noticed for 20 years but the ai boom has led to accelerated investments in a new wave of data centers that are much larger um logan give us some context how are ai data centers different in terms of size and resources they require and their environmental impact i mean what we're seeing now is a is a really [00:08:04] andy: fundamental difference in scale and the technology has changed and shifted and so we've had data centers for a long time cloud computing and whatnot um and but the amount of compute that you need to train these ai models is at a different magnitude but really you know the there's a fundamental difference in scale and so there's two kinds of data centers typically there's big training data centers and these have massive loads they're incorporating all this information huge huge compute needs but they don't necessarily need to be have immense redundancy because they're training and they're learning and then there's inference data centers where you need to have you know you tap in a chat on your phone or computer and needs to respond really quickly and those need to be really responsive they typically need to be closer to population centers wherever you're doing the queries from and so there's two different kinds and and and and it used to be that data centers were pretty small on the order of like 10 to maybe 50 megawatts and um of power consumption and and now we're starting to see hundreds of megawatts even gigawatts of data centers being proposed it's just a completely different order of magnitude at the size of these compute facilities and the energy consumption and and the larger footprint correct the larger itself so aaron this [00:09:27] logan: year as you noted you launched the crowdsource map tracking data center built out across the u.s a common complaint you're hearing from what i understand is lack of transparency around the projects and a recent new york times investigation found that secret meetings and deals were essential to meta's giant 50 billion dollars hyperion data center in louisiana which i think the first that was the first that got a lot of attention talk about what's driving the secrecy around data center projects and how tech companies developers and local officials are able to keep these projects under wraps for so long [00:09:56] aaron: you know that you know that's an excellent question that that everybody's asking you know there has not been and i've taken in 16 000 submissions each one of them states and these are multiple counties and cities in every single state that it was done under a shell corporation it was done in total secrecy they feel absolutely blindsided they had no idea anything was coming at all and this is across the board and you know i tend to follow the hard evidence from the people and on the ground and the data that they're reporting to me and the probability because that usually never lies and so i was astonished at the ndas and i've watched kind of an arc as so i don't know how this happened when the public opposition showed up and logan was talking about that and that was one of the first real significant public oppositions that we saw out in utah and then the groundswell everybody was showing up um we didn't have a seat at the table how did it happen [00:11:20] logan: why the ndas from your perspective why this is it security is it that they don't competition what is the excuse they give for especially the public officials [00:11:30] aaron: i think public opposition i think that they just came in in the dark of the night like the people say and created these organizations because if this had been transparent and up front you would have had the public opposition up front but because you just kind of slid in i think that was one way uh it is like a gold rush and i don't know what their limited time frame is but they had to do it that way to either protect themselves get something through which they knew they would not get through if the public [00:12:04] logan: knew elena you're in virginia which has the most data centers in the world i don't know if people know that but you mentioned this earlier but last month the court ruling stopped this massive digital gateway for moving ahead in prince william county where you live considering virginia is already the home to all these hundreds of data centers go dig down more in this project and your strategy for pushing back because it has welcomed data centers the state has been you know it's been a big part of [00:12:30] elena: development there well sure i mean we have this great you know incentive the data centers don't have to pay um state tax so the rest of us are paying the tax subsidy for them so um the digital gateway was the first project uh after the amazon um campus was exposed and we fought dominion energy and we had our elected leaders actually start saying they couldn't even say the word amazon that's how specific the nda was they couldn't even say the word amazon so um so the digital gateway uh was the first time we saw data centers move outside of the overlay that we had created modeled after loudon county and what was shocking was that there was no concern about the amount of water there was no disclosure so while there is a lot of discussion about um how much water i don't know how we can discuss it they're not required to disclose it so how do we know how much water they're using it's not just quantity it's also quality so when you build this kind of impervious surfaces logan you'll understand this in a drinking water supply watershed what you do is you limit the amount of groundwater recharge and then you have the surface water runoff and then you have the most important national park in the entire country and what is shocking is that there's also no disclosure about power the part of the conversation that's being missed about what our biggest concern is is the risk to the grid just last week we had an event where three gigawatts of power jumped off the grid because the data center i don't know how many removed themselves so imagine you're on a seesaw and one of you jumps off what happens to the other one the reality is that this industry the national risk is really what is happening to our grid and that event on july 22nd almost brought down an entire grid from virginia to chicago what is happening is not just about in my backyard what is happening is a risk to every single rate payer and every single person that relies on affordable reliable energy and so the digital gateway is a microcosm of what is now happening across this entire country and all the coalition works to do is expose and demand transparency oversight and accountability and without that without that basic process implemented everywhere on a statewide and national level every american is at risk and it's not just about my backyard and my [00:15:10] logan: investment it's about this country right and and your strategy is to get that idea out that it's it's not just oh it's that you have this nice farm in virginia you know and you want to make sure your refrigerator doesn't go down so andy um you know as mayor you supported the construction of a data center in downtown lansing michigan it was proposed by deep green a uk-based company the data center would have been for cloud storage not ai but the project as you said face public opposition is not moving forward talk about what you learned from the experience and you were trying to do it in what could be considered the right way and still ran into stumbling blocks because i in a lot of ways which i have said this on my podcast many times the data centers are proxy for anger over not just the abuse of power the abuse of billionaires or getting what they want it has to do with corruption that people feel and the worries about ai at the same time so it's sort of become the vessel because it's a it's a physical manifestation of those things so talk about why if you do it and the negative is some of them are good to do right like assuming for economic development for your for your area in lansing right and to address kind of some of the [00:16:20] Speaker 5: things that have been come up that have come up um you know yes there are concerns about water we had those concerns in the beginning and we we told them closed loops is going to be closed loop so they were using about the same amount of water as the wendys across the street was going to use that was important to us we didn't want them sucking out of the grand river um which is again we didn't want them taking the water explain what it closed it is very briefly it's a closed loop system where they use in essence the the the same um chemical it's called glycol um and they use that to power all of it uh it's a sealed closed loop glycol is the same chemical we use at our stadium for the beer distribution um so it's a according to our folks that this is it's this is a fairly easy uh chemical to use um but again the the water that was projected was was less than our auto plants was less than our battery plant way less um was less was about the same as the the fast food so again we wanted to make sure we were not taking water out of our um out of our aquifer um our power uh we put it at the at the northern edge of our down where the proposal was at the northern edge of our downtown in empty parking lots right across the street from our uh water treatment facility right by our highway um they had committed to um to our noise ordinance they were basically urban infilling they were going to do art and murals and things like that it was small it was a 24 megawatt um so it was small um it was within the whoever said you know the 10 to 50. um uh so there was a lot of that you know we we talked a lot of uh i didn't i didn't sign an nda i wasn't asked to sign an nda the only reason i can think of that someone would want an nda is if there's some kind of proprietary technology but i i did not get asked nor did i sign one um now we do when we do economic development you know we work with businesses all the time i work with with developers i work with businesses they come in with pretty crazy asks sometimes and we narrow them down to what we think is right and then we announce it to the public we bring it to our economic development boards we bring it to council and it gets full public vetting before it goes anywhere and that's what happened here we work with them they wanted to be in our hard downtown and we said no um more because it was a um would become a dead spot it's not an active retail so to come a dead spot so we told them go to our northern edge go into this empty parking lot right so yeah we we put a lot of requirements on them um but the the question that you asked originally um and i am i believe this to my core is that you know this was rejected here in lansing which is okay that's that is exactly the political process we think they're going to go to indiana or illinois who is going to have none of those requirements who are just going to take them in so we we think it's going to be a negative to the environment because we were going to put all these requirements on and others won't so that's that's [00:19:10] elena: my one of my concerns i just want to add something about it's really important about the closed loop because i i think that it's actually uh it is a problem and the closed loop it is not just you use it one and done it has to be flushed and when it is flushed what happens is those chemicals those biosides that are used to clean all the the chips come through that and if we haven't read about what's happening in wyoming a metacampus is responsible they traced it back aaron you i mean you obviously know they traced it back to the metacampus so the closed loop is not the panacea that it has been been told and my question is for the campus in lansing um what is the backup generation um for those every data center campus needs backup generation what is that mayor yeah our again our [00:20:04] Speaker 5: generation was going to be um they were going to generate what they could from the fuel cell and we had eight megawatts reserved for them we have we have excess power um because we have a municipal utility and we can you know this the city works controls the municipal utility utility it's not consumers it's not dte um so our our utility had reserved um in essence power for the max generation we didn't think they were actually going to do 24 megawatts at you know naturally we thought they would do again 16 18 but at a high peak um we had the the power ready for them from the grid which was available again we weren't gonna you know if someone they don't have backup diesel generators that's what i mean they don't have backup diesel generators okay not at all nope this was this was straight fuel cell non-combustion we would not allow that i didn't know where you were going with that so sorry i we have not we didn't it never even came up diesel generation never even came up right go ahead taryn so on the closed [00:21:02] aaron: loop i'm really glad we're having this conversation and elaine exactly what you pointed out happened in cheyenne is is one issue with closed loop but there's another um and logan might really want to jump in on here because the closed loop system is kind of a paradox to the engineers i call it kind of an illusion because if they don't have the open evaporation systems which is where they're using more direct water we go to the closed loop system which actually is going to end up consuming more water off-site because you need the electricity for all these closed loop systems and now you've created a bigger problem so there's two issues with the closed loop but it's presented to people as oh it's closed loop you're going to be using less water in actuality you're going to be using more water off-site you're going to need the duke energies of the world you're going to need the pgenes of the world the utilities the nuclear the coal to provide all the electricity for these closed loop [00:22:07] andy: systems one of the biggest misconceptions that that i found as the stratus data center conversation was was starting to ramp up and reporters were getting really interested in trying to understand the issue is there's actually two water stories one is the water of the consumption of the data center itself but then the other one is the water consumption of your energy generation and usually folks the data center developers will just talk about the the water consumption of the data center itself and they'll say [00:22:35] logan: oh it's closed loop we're not using very much right i was just about to shift to water um data centers require vast amounts of water for what's known as it's called evaporative cooling the um 20 a 2024 report found that most existing data centers use this method uh logan you estimated that kevin o'leary's proposed stratos project in utah would use 16.6 billion galleons of water a year to operate the gas turbines uh o'leary recently said that he is prepared to significantly reduce the size of the proposed 40 000 acre project uh break down this water use for people understand and how does stratus compare to other water intensive projects and we know golf courses use too much water we're aware of that um in places like utah where water is already scarce so logan if you could go through that especially related to kevin and full disclosure i call kevin o'leary a moron almost on the daily so just full disclosure um i think he's the greatest face you could have for this because that means none are ever going to get built um but you don't have to say that i can say that um logan can you explain that like how [00:23:35] andy: how big this is and break down the water use yeah so again the the proposal the proposal that they the stratus data center proposal here in utah it it has many of the similar elements say you know it was under the cover of night we had this extra dynamic where we had this special quasi-governmental organization that was signing signing off on it um but the when when it came up and when it started to hit the the public awareness i started looking around for oh what is their plan what are what are they actually planning to do and there there was no details it was the the level of detail was we're going to build a hundred percent natural gas non-gigawatt data center which is insanity um because i mean the entire state of utah uses about four gigawatts total at our peak so it's more than double what the entire state of utah uses so i just said okay well if there's no details i you know that people are screaming for details they want to know like what does this actually mean and so i said okay what are the two most common types of natural gas um power production and there's two different dominant technologies there's more out there there's boutique technologies that are getting deployed at small scale um but they're you know if you're looking at building a non-gigawatt data center you're going to use like whatever the dominant technologies are so the first option is combined cycle turbines those are the most common kind of utility scale power generation um and they use evaporative cooling for the power generation um and that's again this is in addition to the data center itself and that's what would take if you were to build nine gigawatts with combined cycle turbines that's where it would take 16 billion gallons of water um the problem with that is i mean there's there's lots of problems with that um there's lots of trade-offs depending on what technology you use but those turbines are there's such a rush to gas right now those turbines are back ordered five to seven years so they're not available right now and so what's happening is all these data centers are pivoting to this other technologies this other technology called reciprocating engines and they basically look like a diesel locomotive powered by natural gas um i mean some of them are some of them are some of them actually are diesel the backup generators or diesel but they also make natural gas versions of these they consume less water it's still a non-gigawatt facility would take two billion gallons of water per year but they emit tons they're way less efficient in terms of the combustion so they emit tons of nitrogen oxide pollution that contributes to ozone in Tennessee right exactly and so there are real trade-offs there um and and this is just the water consumption from the power generation this is in addition to you know whatever water consumption there would be from the actual data center campus um and i think one of the really big flashpoints in utah is they planned the location where they were planning to put this is right on the north shore of the great salt lake and if you know anything about utah you know the great salt lake is having troubles um we're using too much water and there's a major effort um across the state there's tons of awareness on reducing water consumption everybody farmers uh the cities everyone's being asked to conserve water you know don't water your lawn we're in a drought we had the worst winter snowpack um as a function of climate change and natural weather variability um and so everyone's being asked to can conserve water especially in the great salt lake uh watershed and then you know there's this this data center is getting this kind of like free pass with these backdoor deals going to consume a massive amount of water and so that just really [00:27:27] logan: really curated people yeah because you can't mow your lump but kevin o'leary gets a bottle of water support for this show comes from netsuite there's a lot of talk about how much you need ai in your business and that can definitely feel overwhelming because the truth is there's still a lot about ai that business owners don't exactly understand but it still feels like your competitors are pulling away from you fortunately there's netsuite next netsuite is an ai-powered business management suite that securely connects all of your data it's a unified suite that brings your financials inventory commerce hr and crm into a 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the construction [00:29:06] aaron: phase that's a great question so you know i've been watching the arc from proposal stage which we've talked about and the main thing is the complete lack of transparency and then all of a sudden construction starts and it's during that construction phase that you start hearing from people um whether it's i've got a trickle of water whether i've had to re-drill a well because my well water went too low too turbidity so depending on like if you have shallow water you're going to get a lot of turbidity and discoloration and so we're now during this construction phase we're getting into the noise the disruption the water issues the lack of water consistent water dirty water water you can't drink into electrical they're getting power outages it flickers on it flickers off to the huge huge disruption and to watch it it's it's almost like really violent they're just destroying the trees the habitat right and then all the way to up and running and when they're up and running this is where we hear so much about this 24 7 noise so it's kind of an arc and so during the construction phase um that's where you're starting to get so many reports of different water issues so um data centers require [00:30:38] logan: continuous power to operate virginia recently passed an energy consumption tax on data center operators will pay 11 cents per kilowatt hour of electricity used and the tax is capped at 600 million dollars a year not sure why it's capped elena how much of an impact do you think the tax will have on electricity costs in virginia and andy would something similar be effective in michigan elena you go first [00:31:00] elena: so the tax really won't have much of an impact what would have had an impact is had they removed the um incentive what will have an impact is a rate care pace right right now before the sec based on the hay market transmission line i just want to uh i appreciate this conversation but i really i just want to interject one thing if you don't if you don't mind sure please so here's here's what people should be paying attention to virginia is your future why are we still fighting for virginia because there's still plenty left to save what is happening in virginia is literally the canary in the coal mine we are running a 21st century industry off coal that's coming from transmission lines all the way from west virginia and on days where that there's too much stress on the grid they are running on diesel generators and it's not about nimby it's about a very basic principle of of a democratic process that has left us out and instead of ensuring that we have clean air and clean water we want to make sure that this [00:32:01] logan: industry can function no matter what the cost right so even even in your point being that even if you paid caught they paid more we shouldn't let them even pay more because it's not worth the cost correct the [00:32:13] elena: taxes here was the perspective of the coalition of why making them pay this particular cost allocation was critical in 2016. if they have to pay for their own stuff you better believe they'll innovate because i give this example all the time somebody drops you off at a parking at a car car max and they say the world is your oyster pick whatever you want you're probably going to pick the ferrari but if they say hey you have to cover the cost of your own car you might pick the ford fiesta and right now they're picking the lamborghini off our dime and it's time they pick the ford fiesta yeah you're making an [00:32:46] logan: excellent point so you don't even think that more taxes is what's needed andy can you respond to this because do you think that putting having these um these extra taxes on energy consumption tax she's not you're saying elaine it's not good enough um andy how do you respond to that i mean i think [00:33:05] Speaker 5: one of the biggest concerns that i hear is you know i don't want my rates to go up for a business that is going to be making a lot of money um and again we we said that's not going to happen here but certainly if if if they're going somewhere and there is a federal tax and it's you know throughout the country because right now we're getting picked apart state by state um and that can reimburse consumers or or pay consumer bills um i do think that would help to alleviate at least some of the concerns now there are other concerns you've heard them here and and i get that um i think there are concerns that could be shared about a lot of different industries that put you know pollution into the air and into the water um and focusing just on data centers ignores a bigger part of of what's going on but um i think that ensuring that that um that people are not being required to pay more for an industry that can certainly pay their own again when they came to us and said you know we want to talk about incentives we said not a chance you guys are cash rich um there's not a chance you're getting an incentive and you're going to pay to make sure that our poorest folks are getting uh energy help which is our pennies for power project let me bring logan in a recent goldman [00:34:19] logan: sachs commodities research report found that the u.s data center power demand is forecast more than double the 66 gigawatts in 2027 from 31 in 2025. um put that energy use into perspective logan and and the stress um it increases on the grid and aside from all these other uh deleterious effects and in order to meet energy demand some companies have built on-site power sources that are separate from public utilities um uh logan for the stratus project in utah you calculated that a nine gigawatt natural gas power plant will produce around 35 million metric tons of carbon emissions every year and i'd love to understand the first question and how significant is that to utah's air quality and [00:35:03] andy: emissions as a whole yeah i mean the the this is an enormous increase in electricity production if if if it comes to pass and um there's i i think there's also a good possibility that this is a we're in a hype cycle and the ai data center bubble will burst as you know as soon as you put a dollar amount on on compute efficiency all of a sudden you know some clever engineer figures out how to do something more efficient you actually it's actually funny i've seen a number of articles back from the year 2000 when the internet was first blowing up and we thought oh we'd have all these you know internet servers everywhere they're going to consume all this power and then what happened energy efficiency was this you know a massive push and we've actually been able to keep um energy load growth um through more efficient lighting etc you know largely flat in this country for a long time even as we've been growing and so it points we did get all that bad social media stuff that made our [00:36:09] logan: girls feel bad and our boys addicted to porn but go ahead go ahead yes that's another that's another [00:36:14] andy: show that's that's a separate problem um that that's that that's more of like should we be doing it in the first place um and but anyways so but if this low growth does come to pass um that is a massive build out cycle for our energy system now one piece of the conversation is our energy system needs to be upgraded there are so many things that need investment and so there's a possibility if this is done the right way with transparency with public input um that you know these cash rich uh entities could make investments and i'm talking about advanced transmission technologies like reusing the current right-of-way to put advanced conductors that can put more energy through the lines but what is if they go through with [00:37:08] logan: this one the quality of air and the emissions are staggering for you yeah yeah and and to to put it in [00:37:14] andy: perspective um you know the entire state of utah has like 65 million metric tons so this would be like a 50 percent this one facility would increase utah's total greenhouse gas emission total co2 emissions by like 50 percent now the other thing that isn't accounted in that is upstream natural gas leakage natural gas is is not really natural it's actually methane gas methane natural gas is about 95 percent methane and methane is a really potent greenhouse gas it's about 80 times more potent than co2 on a 20-year lifespan which is what we all care about um and and it turns out that there is an enormous amount of methane leakage in upstream oil and gas production facilities in utah and wyoming it's something like five percent of the gas that comes out of the ground it's pulled out of the ground just leaks into the air erin what were you gonna say well you know [00:38:10] aaron: logan is talking about the huge load on one system and if we're going to build out 1200 to 1400 or more of these across america you're talking about a load that i do not believe our antiquated infrastructure can [00:38:29] elena: handle so i participate in what are called these terrible they're called the prince will energy engagement group they cannot reconductor they were supposed to reconductor the massive transmission line that goes to the manassas national battlefield and within one year they said we cannot afford to have any planned outages on this line because it will bring down the system your transmission line infrastructure is like your highway and right now that highway is clogged and what we are building is out an entire infrastructure for one industry what happens when that industry innovates and we have built out trillions of dollars worth of infrastructure that they don't need anymore who is the one responsible for that we have to pause and we have to have a plan and i'm just going to tell you if you want to see your future look at virginia they're not doing it any different because if they could they would [00:39:21] logan: support for the show comes from rippling imagine you just found out your sales team is at risk for missing quota no need to panic just ask rippling ai since it's built on your real-time people and business data rippling ai can pull metrics from rippling and salesforce into a meeting ready dashboard showing quota attainment headcount trajectory and monthly revenue to quota by region in seconds you can see exactly what's behind your quota risk and fix it before it's missed question answered action taken crisis averted so when you have critical business questions that need answers don't just file a ticket and wait weeks for an outdated report describe what you need and have rippling ai build it instantly from your live people and business data whether it's a dashboard with detailed charts or automated workflows with the right triggers conditions and approvals ready to rule your business head to rippling.ai.cara to get only ai built to give you full visibility and take complex actions across your entire organization that's r-i-p-p-l-i-n-g dot a-i slash cara k-a-r-a sign up for exclusive access today yeah okay so on that note we had an expert outside question in every episode here is yours [00:40:35] Speaker 6: i'm beth macy i'm a reporter and author who's running for congress in virginia's sixth district data centers have become a huge issue in my rural agricultural part of the state in fact opposition to them seems to be the only thing that's bringing republicans and democrats together lately so i guess maybe that's a healthy thing for our democracy many people from big tech the business community and even some of our local governments say that data centers and ai are inevitable so don't worry everything will be fine you luddites i disagree i think we need guardrails about who pays for the utilities the water usage and the environmental impact of data centers not to mention protection from the looming catastrophe that ai promises for our workforce i think ai is going to make what nafta did to factory workers look like child's play so i'm asking you guys what kind of guard rails can we place against data centers and ai what kind of federal legislation can protect our jobs our young people and our land and water from a handful of billionaire kooky man babies who want to be trillionaires [00:41:40] logan: okay that's kind of i like beth she's a lot what a great book she wrote um aaron uh why don't you go first and then logan andy and elena to answer best question um obviously it it it's a as as you were pointing out elaine it's a bigger issue than just this but aaron you start oh yeah it it's it's every issue [00:42:01] aaron: and it's everyone's issue that's at stake it's the water it's the electrical grid it's the cost of utilities it's the noise it's the air pollution it's the loss of our land our sanctuary uh it just feels like a full-on assault and i think at a local level you have to have um and see that at a local level they're the ones in charge of zoning and permitting is to have oversight i know that states we have 14 states that are now going to start looking at you know state legislation and oversight and yes federal this is an absolute run away train and it is probably one of the biggest conversations that i've ever seen in my 30 years in my career that is political it could be bipartisan everybody's going to have to be involved i am perplexed cara why our leaders don't listen to the people and there's a movement happening and a shift that i don't think these big tech companies [00:43:12] andy: or giants saw coming um go ahead uh logan um we need demand we need data centers to have demand flexibility so they're not adding to our peak load at the most critical times so now i'm putting additional stress on the grid that's going to go that's going to be really important they need to pay for their own infrastructure and they need to pay they need to socialize and like pay for upgrading the whole grid is really what they should be doing um and that we really need it to be you know bring your own clean energy and storage um we have this is an opportunity to actually build out and and develop some of the emerging technologies so and a great example of that that's i think a a major opportunity here in in utah is uh and across the west is developing geothermal energy and so pairing solar with geothermal um there's enormous opportunities there and and we can have data centers help to to you know drive down the cost so that that's so that that uh energy type can can displace other kind of firm generation it can be clean firm generation which our grid needs um and it has to be transparent reporting and and public engagement um the utah foundation uh it's it's one of the the groups here in utah they do an annual survey of voter priorities in 2024 their number two issue that they ranked was politicians ignoring voters and and and this you know this this perfectly encapsulates uh politicians ignoring voters this issue around data centers and then the stratus was just like this massive uh example of that and one of the big political fallouts here in utah i mean apologists are not immune um are the the president of the utah state senate uh lost his primary election and yeah well i'll get to that in a second yeah yeah it's it's a political earthquake he's one of the most uh influential legislators here in utah and and it was it was not close andy speak to that are you [00:45:12] Speaker 5: worried about your job if you're not no um you know i just i just won reelection in november and i knocked 10 000 doors first let me say i agree with the guardrails you know i've actually had conversations with the climate mayors and the sustainable cities coalition and they've asked me what are the guard rails you were able to get and they've got documents that say put these guard rails on it's everything you've heard you know water electric making sure they pay for it maintenance we haven't even talked about maintenance um maintenance heat capture customer benefit things like that um that is absolutely that should be on everybody's to-do list i don't care who you are um but you know i i knocked 10 000 doors and you want to know what what people want to hear about in lansing michigan and in michigan taxes are too high costs are too high roads stink and potholes public safety and too many guns on the street i got a few you know data center environmental i did get a few of those but when politicians listen to people they listen to all of the things all of the things it's not just one thing i can't just focus on one thing and this is part of it so when we when we said you know what we're doing with with you know whether it's you know high manufacturing the new battery plant that just came in auto manufacturing the proposed data center all of these things we talk about benefit that's going to help out for taxation so we don't have to raise taxes we talk about building housing we're building you know new housing units affordable and regular and market rate so i i mean i disagree i think politicians not everybody right not everybody is is a prince um but i think politicians do listen to constituents but they have to make decisions and when you talk about the uh the studies you know i tell everybody this politicians or public officials or a mayor you have to make decisions we are decision makers and when you decide for somebody they're like of course you did i'm right and when you decide against somebody they say you suck and you're not listening to me so we really lose no matter what but that's the job the job is to listen to people and then make a decision for what you think is best for your community and you know what if you tell enough people that they're wrong they're going to vote you out of office um so that's i mean that's that's and they're doing that that's the job and some areas they are and in some areas they are not yeah we can certainly point to a few places where they are but i can point to a lot of places where they're not and that is the same system we have always had all right elena [00:47:37] elena: so let me just share a little story uh very quickly uh when this fight began in 2014 uh i was on the general assembly floor with the most socially conservative republican in the entire you know in the entire you know uh delegation and um and somebody said oh my god hell has frozen over bob marshall and elena schlossberger hugging and let me tell you as much as this industry is tearing communities apart it is also bringing people together at a time when things have never been more tribal or toxic between the two parties and that has been our superpower and as far as decision makers i have had a board of supervisors sit in front of me and say i'm the decision maker she didn't care about the facts she didn't care about the science she didn't care about the risk to the grid she didn't care about the overall impacts of what was happening and in my community you can't get elected unless you are on the right side of this issue because it's not just about nindy i say this all the time i just want to leave this one quote before sure if i am only if i if i am not for myself who am i if i'm only for me who am i and if not now then when this fight is everything it's about every single conservation easement in the state of virginia it's about transmission lines it's about dirty diesel generators it's about coal it's about everything people care about which i think is true in some but i think [00:49:04] logan: the mayor has a point people are also concerned about this and this like the ability to be nuanced [00:49:09] elena: has been lost in when your utility bills are doubling and you're in one of those communities that is a demographic that can't afford it you suddenly care because you because now your utility [00:49:19] logan: bill is as expensive as your rent or your mortgage right so in june republican primaries in box elder county which i think was what you're referring to some pro stratus data center can has lost elections also shaping out to be a national issue in the midterms at the same time opposition is sometimes characterized as you said as hyper local and nimby driven um uh what's interesting to me is is the point you made about the tech companies don't know i've had meetings with all of them and last year and a half ago well i wrote a book called burn book which was somewhat critical of them very critical and they thought it was too mean and when i went to see them i said i don't think it's mean enough i think people hate you like i think you're gonna see a hatred growing towards you and they're like they don't hate us i'm like no they hate you and you'll see as more and more happens and lots of various and what was interesting is just recently suddenly a lot of these tech companies have called me they're like it looks like you're right about them hating us i was like now they hate you more like i don't know what to tell you because you've done so many horrible things but talk about um you know when you when they try to blame it and on nimbyism or what's happening here um maybe each of you uh talk about um how it's affected politics and by the way it's against the um um the backdrop of president trump signing an executive order to speed up federal approvals for ai data centers and energy infrastructure and the energy department announced last week the trump administration is repurposing federal land to host massive data centers so that's happening um why don't uh you know you start given the federal government's efforts to accelerate it to what extent can you reign it in and then the others can comment on that uh in terms of reining it in yeah again i think we can set local conditions but not if they put it on a federal land um generally [00:51:11] Speaker 5: zoning is not i mean zoning generally gets left to locals with local citizens being able to make that decision at a planning commission meeting um which is made up of citizens that are appointed or you know elected um so i think that that's i think remaining a local decision where you can throw out your mayor and council members for whatever decision they make you have recall you know one of the things that concerns me and you know about this is the the trump administration is proposing um putting uh federal bureaucrats in charge of making decisions at the federal level for grants and other things like that um without actually looking at the the actual science or the you know the the conditions and i i've been pretty critical of that uh i think leaving it local but you know and i know you had asked kind of what's the what's the impact i think that um i honestly think that those that care that have made this their their issue have formed a block and i've seen a ton of that so elena and aaron [00:52:12] logan: first um how do you if trump is going to give away federal lands to do this there is no stopping it [00:52:18] elena: for now at least so let me just preface this with actually um let's make this very clear it is a bipartisan issue both on the side of responsible development and oversight and irresponsible it doesn't matter whether you're blue or red i see it in both ways president biden on his way out the door was the first one to pass an executive order to allow federal lands to have a data center infrastructure and so what president trump did was he just simply like i mean lit that on fire right now in prince swan can i read you the headline prince will enforce national park land swap considered for data centers there's no local oversight this is federal land we can do nothing all we can do is impress upon the secretary of the interior that if this happens you will start to see um i think such a backlash against republicans that is more than what is happening now because this issue this issue unites everyone and it does matter we do want people being able to see this you know fighting data centers and talking about energy and water and grid infrastructure let me tell you not the sexiest thing but when it comes to your utility bills it really matters and so this is how i this as much as it has risked democracy let me tell you something democracy is what is saving us right now it is people coming together using the ballot box using the process and using their voices to expose the rot and not caring if it's their own party and you talked about oversight i think that was the question in the state of virginia um in january we have a very um truncated session and for this will be year number five we go we ask for legislation last year we got some through it's about transparency it's about accountability it's about regulation and it's about holding them accountable there are ways on a statewide level and and we're going to continue to [00:54:14] logan: try again aaron very quickly um on if the feds put them on these lands was it's very concerning and you [00:54:21] aaron: are starting to see that happen and i i do know um probably probably i'll do that senator senator sanders is definitely looking at more federal oversight and i don't know if that kind of if we can get some of that past could slow back um trump's decision on federal lands but it gets pretty dicey i actually still you know and andy said it this is very much local issues very much state issues and it is concerning that um federally trump would just come in and take over those lands so it's it's and it is it's it's a bipartisan issue and you know elena is is correct there's going to there's going to be some type of uh you know backlash here politically and i i hear it state by state texas is really chiming up out there that this is going to be enough game changer for people [00:55:16] logan: to switch parties to switch parties okay so i want to end on talking about data centers done right because they're going to come this is going to have they're going to have some of them but how to do it correctly i'd like to end on um a recent report from brookings institute argues that data centers can become sustainable engines of local economic growth but only if communities move away from development model defined by quote speedy deal making and opaque negotiations which we've been talking about here um open ai has a proposal for so-called ai economic zones that are quote created by local state and federal government together with industry that significantly speed up the permitting processes for building ai infrastructure like new solar uh arrays wind farms and nuclear reactors i know sam altman's particularly interested in nuclear reactors um talk kevin o'leary has said quote sustainability is at the heart of what we do in terms of these proposals which is not accurate um but talk about what has to happen here if there is where a data center is a genuine value add for the people who live there i'd like each of you to address it and any of these ideas whether it's opening as these ai economic zones or using nuclear or what would be your idea if you had to be pushed and say okay we're going to have a data center if you were running the show each of you what would you um foresee and you could foresee in the future too like it doesn't have to be what exists at this point uh let's start with you logan and then andy and elena and aaron and then i have a final question yeah i mean this is what we've been trying [00:56:50] andy: to to communicate to folks like let's have a positive vision for how to do this responsibly if data centers are done responsibly and they actually pay for their own infrastructure infrastructure and help to actually drive down costs of the infrastructure for other folks you could actually you could actually see energy electricity costs coming down because you're having a big um you know a big load that's helping to pay for a lot of the costs that are usually socialized across right payers and so it is possible but you need people who are um rate payer defenders who are engaged at the public service commission understand these issues and understand how to structure the tariffs so that that data centers pay their fair way or more than their fair way and you know again they have it has to be data flex or demand flexibility you know often our grid is built to supply energy at the peak times when everyone's turning on their air conditioner and when it's the hottest out right you have to have enough uh capacity to serve those and it's really just like 10 to 20 hours a year that our energy uh spikes up to the be the highest level and that drives enormous amount of costs so if they can just turn off curtail the load during just a few hours of the year they could actually uh not add to that the peak load that our grid has to serve and that which is a big driver of costs and again this is an opportunity to build nuclear energy um nuclear is is there's a lot of discussion about nuclear um and frankly i it's it's interesting because you know it is a carbon free form of energy there's a lot of health concerns with it we still haven't dealt with the waste but the biggest problem with nuclear energy is it's always a decade out and it's five to six times the cost of anything else and so it's kind of it's used as kind of a distraction for other technologies that we have available today which is wind solar batteries and geothermal and geothermal specifically fills the same kind of clean firm generation profile that nuclear would and we're seeing some some of the very first next generation geothermal projects are coming online this year actually in a few months here in utah and there'll be a few more in the west and so it's a really exciting time people should be talking about geothermal and nuclear is just really not a part of the equation because it's not economic and [00:59:19] Speaker 5: it's not timely uh andy yeah i mean i think i've talked quite a bit about kind of the list that we've come up with but you know i i love the we've talked about water and making sure water is is um preserved i live in michigan right 20 of the fresh water in uh in the world is right here in the midwest and the great lakes you know again i love the closed loop system but i i hear the the issues so i think that needs to be part of the conversation um contributions to low-income energy programs uh again if they're going to come in and they're going to do this we want to make sure that people not only aren't being affected but more people can uh can afford to live um so i love that you know they have to pay to build it again if they're cash rich they have to pay to build it in our case they were going to pay to build it and then give it to us to operate you know for me local decision if the locals want to operate it if they want the you know the company to operate it um no incentives and i and i hold to that you know they don't need them and um i don't think that we should be giving them um you know urban infill zoning and location you know location again we wanted to put ours in in the northern part of the downtown people didn't like that and they got their way and that's okay um but it's also industrial by right like if there's an industrial area we've got plenty of industrial areas we have an auto plant that um that closed in 2006 you know industrial by right they may they may go there um which is the natural place for them to go you know we don't have farmland so i can't comment on that i think there's a system that can be set up um because again i think we're going to have them i think there is a demand and i you'll say we'll get to it for ai i mean when we have people come in and tell us the evils of ai reading it from the ai on their phone that you know there's a hypocrisy there there um so that's my last question you have to figure out what you need and how you get there right uh elena [01:01:07] elena: so i just i i look at this and i've reversed the equation and the equation is not how do we meet this low demand it is how do they demand less here's what a good ai data center build out looks like they're not relying on coal they're not relying on diesel generators they're not relying on gas turbines they don't need all the chillers on top because they need to remain so cool um i mean because that's really what this is all about is their cooling uh a healthy data center build out is less a healthy data center build out is simply a new technology that requires less because i'll tell you a campus four miles down the road from the at an intersection 150 acres two campuses combined is about a thousand megawatts which is one gigawatt that's enough for one nuclear reactor the scale and cumulative impacts are beyond anything it is unprecedented and we need to slow down to understand like that you know the cart before the horse i mean that cart is like miles ahead [01:02:10] aaron: that's a really good point uh aaron i'm laughing elena because that's exactly what i was going to say this conversation and everybody's points are spot on but it's difficult to have because the horse has left the barn and this is precisely you know and i i will talk about the corporations here and i have seen them do this for 30 years over and over again expecting the same result you never put safety and infrastructure on the up front you're always running something down the line for the money to be the first to be the best to make more money and if you would reverse that business model and do safety and infrastructure on the up front before you let the horse out of the gate you'll still yield the profit but your long-term yields would be so much greater and everybody that has been here today i've loved this conversation i could do this all day long as points are well taken and the horse has left the barn and it's going to be very hard to get it back and i do think that this time it's going to take local council is going to state take state it's going to take federal but something that i think we have been missing for a long time is going to be a huge part of this change in conversation and how you get that horse back in the barn if you can and how you move forward is going to be coming from the people they have often been left out of this equation yeah yeah but this seems so this is my last question [01:03:53] logan: data centers obviously have wrapped up as as andy noted in a broader ai backlash and for many people it as i noted it feels like the facilities and the tech they enable being forced upon them and i'd like to know from each of you the last question what's the most important thing that needs to happen to change public opinion not just on data centers but on ai more broadly and tech i think the tech people have done it to themselves which i you know one of your when you said safety i i i had a line in my book five years ago saying um how can you understand safety if you never felt unsafe a day in your life these are people who create things who aren't unsafe and then wonder why people of color or women are upset by social this is about social media because they never feel unsafe is how do you the broad public opinion is very clear on this and especially with young people around ai overall and now data centers is another manifestation of that is it at some level it does cross over into probably not great for our future right not to be part of the building things and in industries um probably these discussions happened around railroads and uh you know cars and everything else we've had this before and as you note aaron correctly these companies never change it's just the type of company it is it's the same people doing the same nonsense um what do you what how is it what's the most important thing that needs to happen to change public opinion on the whole on the topic um i'd like first elena and then andy logan and aaron you get the last word on what could be done to change the publicist attitude because right now it's deeply negative i would say and it it should [01:05:34] elena: be somewhere in the middle presumably i i don't know i think that's a great question i i wouldn't presume that it should be i think that there is a place for technology and right now it's like we're at caligula's drunken fest and everybody is partaking with no thought of consequences and so i believe i trust people and i believe they first of all we're smelling it we're feeling it we're seeing it we're tasting it something is broken and uh i see it with my kids who who actually reject a lot of the ai slide too and i think that what has to happen is a more mature conversation which you know is not happening right now so i actually i don't know i i think that this is i'm a counselor i was a middle school counselor i think the conversation the difficult conversation that's happening now needs to happen and if it's uncomfortable [01:06:31] Speaker 5: good that's a really good point uh uh andy sure um you know i i think cara you made some good points that this has happened before and i think a lot of that knowing my history is is unchecked commerce right so what did we do in the past we didn't just suddenly trust the auto industry we didn't just suddenly trust manufacturing we said five day work week we said occupational safety standards we said you know these are things that for us in a union state created the unions these are the important pieces that got us to this is this is a positive because it's jobs and people are getting paid and the cars are coming and uh and i think that's what we've been talking about is you know what are the guardrails what are the guardrails to make sure that that we can have this tool that i do think is going to be part of the future but have it responsibly um and all that being said what does that mean it means you got to build trust and i think you're hearing this here from elena and erin and logan and you and there is not trust and i think you and i talked about this you asked me to people not trust the local government and i said i think they do trust the local government they don't trust the companies to do what they're promising um so i think it's it's building trust and how do you build trust carrot and the stick um you know the the carrot is you tell them this is what you have to do for people to trust you and the stick is these are the guardrails and you will comply with these guardrails or you won't have a business and somebody else will comply with the guardrails and they will win the day and you would ask you know before what's the rush these folks are all telling local governments that they want to be up in 18 months because the ai race is going to be over in 18 months so you got to build guardrails you got to do it with trust and i think that would result in getting us the technology that we need as we move forward that's a really good point uh uh logan yeah so [01:08:30] andy: i mean i think what's happening one of the one of the dynamics is happening right now is with this current administration it is really a smash and grab kind of environment i call it a coin operated presidency but go ahead right right exactly and and that is is going to lead to a massive backlash because it's just not it's it's not building it's destroying the social compact and these companies if they're smart they need to figure out how to regain the public's trust and and really to do that we need policy regularity and really i think the the name of the game kind of the the key point is clear fair rules aren't the enemy of growth they protect responsible growth so and that's what we need we need to get back to this kind of and and it's bringing the public into the conversation making sure we can move forward together unless we're doing that we're going to have all of this conflict and it's just gonna it's just gonna blow up in their face because we have a democracy and that's the way it works and it's not going to turn out well until we can get back to clear fair rules aaron you get the last [01:09:40] aaron: word well everybody brings up such great points and and listening to all of it it kind of makes me think you know um we're in between here uh the flintstones and the jetsons and the people suddenly become the gladiators and for all the forward progress we make we're going to realize there's some things in the flintstone days that we just can't do without and that's jeopardizing our natural resources our health and our welfare and i think a lot of this will begin right at home and teaching kids about ai so it's going to be a balance that happens in the home it needs to be a balance that will happen politically it will be a conversation and just this push-all be-all um almost takeover of a country and and believe me this is not only here in america this is a global issue i have 10 countries reaching out now so if ever there's been a moment where we can collectively come together on something who knew data centers might be the one thing that unites i think you're interestingly i think you are somewhat [01:10:57] logan: effective when they start talking about data centers in space that's you know it's like i'm just leaving [01:11:02] aaron: and we're like go good for you god it's a frustrating conversation there are other options and there are other solutions and and we have clearly discussed that and why we have to do it this way maybe this will be the last time we learn the lesson but i don't think so i don't think so either anyway um and [01:11:20] logan: i will i would be remiss some of the stuff around it i just did a recent series about medical stuff about longevity and some of the ai stuff is going to be groundbreaking and so yes absolutely that's what we have to focus on the stuff that is useful for everyone versus just a small group of people who just want to become richer and stuff like that this has been an incredibly thoughtful conversation i really appreciate it and i'm glad we had the time to sort of debate different things and talk it out and it's an ongoing issue and so we'll have you back and maybe next year to see where we are when and how this is altered well it's a great conversation i enjoyed meeting everyone thank you so much thank [01:11:56] Speaker 5: you everyone for being so thoughtful come on out to lansing anytime at lansing i'll give you a tour [01:12:02] logan: thank you guys so much for doing this today's show was produced by nishat kurwa michelle alloy catherine milsop megan bernie madeline laplante dubie and caitlin lynch special thanks to dave shaw andrea lopez cruzado and julia sharp levine and our theme music is by trackademics if you're already following the show you're getting solar powered aesthetically pleasing data center in your backyard if not we're sending you to elon's data center in space thanks for watching see you on monday