Except datacenters are actually very low environmental impact. As long as they provide their own power, they have MUCH lower impact than most farms would.
Key point doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Do all these data center buildouts include providing their own power? Seems like the answer is largely no. These companies expect power infrastructure to be supplied by the government, but also want lower taxes.
The mega-scale ones almost all have power as part of the ramp-up process. They are also a massive tax benefit.
Looking at the controversial Stratos data center in Box Elder County:
Box Elder County baseline (before Stratos):
2026 General Fund revenue: $36.1M
2026 General Fund tax revenue: $21.1M
2026 Municipal Service Fund: $18.8M
Stratos (Phase 1):
Power: 3 GW
Revenue expected: $30M/year
Revenue as % of existing county tax rev: 142%
Stratos (Full Buildout):
Power: ~9 GW
Revenue expected: $108M/year
Revenue as % of existing county tax rev: 512%
Planned power details:
- Box Elder says it will use natural gas from the nearby Ruby Pipeline.
- MIDA describes it as dedicated on-site generation designed to limit demand
on the existing grid.
- The project ramps from ~3 GW in Phase 1 to ~9 GW at full buildout.
I'll acknowledge that the MIDA structure is not a normal county tax bill and comes with explicit energy-rate discounts, but given that the county could hit 500%+ of its previous tax revenue, I think that's a very easy deal for the county to make.
I drove around the Stargate datacenter construction site in Abilene TX late April. They have maybe 5 or 6 of these large gas fired plants being built near the power substation. I'm not 100% sure what they are but i've seen the same things out in Midland/Odessa for power generation. I'm assuming they'll be generating electricity.
/the scale of that site is like nothing i've ever seen. 100s of those giant cooling units lined up and enough piping that my wife said it reminder her of the refineries on the TX coast.
First of all I didn't say that we should ban datacenters. The point is that they should benefit the locals one way or another. Requiring them to invest in energy and other infra is a good first step.
Like producing more tax revenue for a county than the rest of the county combined? That payoff allows for insane levels of infrastructure improvement at literally no cost to locals.
In the case of the Stratos / Box Elder County mega-datacenter, they are planning to use gas turbines to run off of the nearby Ruby Pipeline. It's a pretty tidy solution, if you ask me.
Even unprofitable farms can produce edible food. A datacenter is a machine that uses electricity to make heat and no other physical prouducts. That's a tough justification to make to people who live near one.
I really dont get this. The US is nowhere close to facing a food shortage. If all the desert farms in the west closed beef and a few vegetables would get a tiny bit more expensive. People act like if we didnt do destructive desert farming we'd have to implement rationing.
Food prices rising has been a political hot topic for the last few years. Voters would have your head for any obvious action that made beef get more expensive, especially NIMBY groups and current ranchers.
How many existing data centers do you think you rely on each day? Almonds do not realistically improve my life in nearly the way the internet does, but also who am I to say whether you should be allowed to farm almonds or build a datacenter?
Key point doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Do all these data center buildouts include providing their own power? Seems like the answer is largely no. These companies expect power infrastructure to be supplied by the government, but also want lower taxes.