Utah has an 'obligation' to allow massive data center project, governor says

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: what is your position on the data center in box elder county uh is it being rushed and would you characterize your your uh discussions with kevin o'leary yeah so um we we've had a few discussions [00:00:12] Speaker 2: for sure um what i can say is that um the discussions have been have been very positive uh that uh that let me back up a little bit and just talk generally about about data centers uh we we've had data centers in this state for for a long time i've been i've been pretty neutral on data centers um i think they're they're important but they're not the uh the number one source of economic development for our state by by any means and and shouldn't be um look we're living through a very interesting time right now uh there was an an article i read yesterday that said that this is this is very similar to kind of the the nuclear arms race uh the the nuclear area era you know 60 70 80 years ago um very different than uh than anything that we've experienced in in the past several decades and there is a national security piece to this that that has to be acknowledged uh the the the rate at which machine learning and artificial intelligence is is changing uh the the dangers that that poses and what happens if an adversarial nation gets ahead of us in this space is something that we should all be worried about and so we have an obligation i think every state has an obligation when it comes to uh to this space to uh to allow for these types of of data centers to be built in their states we we have to do this we can't just say no and shut the doors and go home and and let china win this uh this technology race so that that just can't be an option and so we we have to do this smart we have to do it in in the right places um and in the right way we should not have data centers everywhere uh and we should be very careful with our resources and and so those are the conversations that have been had unfortunately there's a lot of really bad information out there about data centers people are operating off of uh off of models and technologies that are have changed drastically over the past few years especially when it comes to water usage uh that's that's one where um the numbers are just wrong um there was a there was also a report about warming around data centers that was also deeply flawed and immediately found out that it's deeply flawed but everybody just believes it now that that data centers use all the water and destroy everything around them and and that's just not true and so we're going to have to have these in our country and we're going to have to have some of these in our state and so the question is again where do we put them and and how do we do this in the in the best way this is a a location where they have water available it's not taking additional water away from the great salt lake it's taking water that would be used for other things and using it for a different purpose now um and uh and we we have air quality uh standards that we have to abide by that they have to abide by and here's where utah is really shining we did something different than other states and that is we said we're not going to allow these data centers to take all of our power uh which will significantly increase the the power consumption and the power rates for the people of our state we're not going to allow that to happen again this is the bad information that keeps getting put out there so these companies if and when they decide to build um they're going to have to build their own power supplies and ultimately that's good for our state because they're going to put power back on the grid which will help us keep our power rates lower than than anywhere else in the country and so look i i understand the concern um that people have i have concerns about where we're putting these and when we're putting these um but this is one where we've we've had conversations uh recently again this is going through midas so it's not it's not it's a quasi um uh state entity but i don't have control over that entity um i don't i i think i appoint one person to to that entity and uh and so we um again we want to you know we we want to make sure that they're doing it the right way and uh and this is one that i i think is is going to uh help our country long term and that's something that we all have to be a part [00:04:18] Speaker 1: of i do yes and and to the concerns that it has been rushed what do you well what i can say again [00:04:26] Speaker 2: is mida has a process that they go through and and hearings that they go through um and uh people have had a chance to to provide feedback i this this whole idea of being rushed i'm so tired of our country taking years to get stuff done it's the dumbest thing ever we think that taking time makes things better or safer it absolutely does not you get a chance to give your feedback and then decisions get made that's how we have to do stuff in this in this country and in this state people have a chance we're hearing from them they're hearing from them again i don't get to make this decision but the decision makers will take into account the feedback that they receive and then they'll make a decision and then we move forward um we've we've let the the the you know people against virtually everything destroy our country destroy our industrial base destroy our mining base destroy our housing base because we can't build anything in this country anymore and those days are over we're done with that um we we again we take feedback we we understand what what people want we say no to many many things because there is good feedback but we can't say no to everything and this is in a place where it's i mean it's built for something like this if you if you go out there it's not next to somebody's house where people are going to get angry because it's it's it's in their neighborhood it's right next to a a natural gas pipeline so they can build their own energy um it's uh it's not gonna i mean it's just i i don't know if you can't if you can't put this here then we can't put them anywhere and and that's that's part of the frustration that i think people are feeling [00:05:58] Speaker 1: governor are you concerned about the potential emissions that this project may have [00:06:03] Speaker 2: i i already said that i already said yes you have to meet the air quality standards period