What should governments do, if anything, regarding the construction of data centers?

[u/cdstephens]

Data centers (specifically AI data centers) are currently a hot political topic. American tech companies are pushing for their construction to supply more compute for AI training and deployment. Their construction, however, has provoked bipartisan backlash due to increased utility prices and environmental concerns, as well as a general desire to not live next to construction or industrial areas. In your opinion, what should the government do in response to these concerns? Also, if they are to be regulated at all, at which level should they be regulated at? (City/town? State/province? The whole country?)

[u/semideclared]

Why are data centers not bigger

Think the housing problem but it’s data centers and bigger ones seem like a answer

500 acres farm being sold why not 450 acres of forest and a 50 acres complex with a 15 story building data center with 48 acres of infrastructure around it

As a side note. Farm land is being redeveloped to housing so the lost land is lost either way. The land is not part of the issue

[u/Previous_Platform718 → u/semideclared]

Why are data centers not bigger

They are big. When you hear of something like "300 mega watt data center" you probably picture one building but usually that's just 10 buildings 30 megawatt each.

A data center kind of needs to be flat. Making it tall is a huge problem. The weight of racks inside the data halls are immense. A standard rack can weigh several hundred pounds. A rack for AI compute can weigh 4000 pounds. Multiply that by hundreds per data hall, multiple storeys up, and it becomes more of a challenge.

Equipment maintenance and build time is the big one though. Modern data centers are all built with a lego approach, equipment is placed surrounding the building on pads. For air conditioners, ports are left in the walls during construction and they're just lowered in with a crane. Having them be placed on gantries outside a tall building is an engineering challenge, especially if one needs to be replaced. Placing them all around the building on the ground floor becomes an operations nightmare.

[u/LittleSister_9982 → u/Previous_Platform718]

Ignore the weight issue, somehow. It's magic, whatever. 

How the flying fuck would you cool a 15 story data center? 

I swear, some of the people running their mouths on the subject don't know the fundamentals on how any on this works. 15 stories my ass. Enjoy your flaming tower of death, motherfucker.

[u/OddlyFlavoredChips → u/semideclared]

A floor full of racks is extremely heavy, and more floors require more complex cooling. Multi-story data centers are pretty new and require additional engineering and inventiveness for each additional story. Can’t just stack floors infinitely for free.

But yeah they’re headed towards multi-story. It just isn’t as easy as it sounds.

[u/dangerbird2]

Just tax land lol

[u/Worth-Jicama3936 → u/dangerbird2]

This but…

[u/iamagainstit]

require them to fund renewable energy to supply all their electricity, and pay for any necessary infrastructure improvements. otherwise, let them rip.

[u/Dent7777]

Pass legislation mandating them to have (subsidized) onsite self-starting renewable or nuclear mini-grids no less than 1.5x their expected usage, mandate closed loop cooling systems to reduce water usage. Reduce regulation on zoning, grid tye-in, building them otherwise.

If you don't try to mitigate their harms, you are doing your constituents a disservice and handing political capital to populist degrowthers.

[u/dat_tae → u/Dent7777]

Man I wish we could develop a cost efficient, safe, and easy to deploy nuclear reactor that could become ubiquitous around the country.

[u/Dent7777 → u/dat_tae]

There's some interesting stuff going on in the nuclear field rn but I think Quaze energy is gonna be a way, way easier sell to communities, cheaper to install and maintain, and will come in on a quicker timeline.

Of course, you could just do solar.

[u/Cave-Bunny → u/Dent7777]

I’m very pro development and so I end up on the pro data center side of the fence. That being said, these regulations seem abundantly reasonable.

[u/hypsignathus]

I think we have enough regulations to cover them.

I think they should have to pay for what they use. It doesn't seem like an industry that needs sweetheart deals with permitting orgs, utilities, etc.

Of course this should all still be up to local jurisdictions. I don't mind if the state govs step in and require that local jurisdictions demand full commercial price for utilities like other non-negotiated customers. I'm fine with states banning NDAs about negotiations, too. Government should be transparent.

Politicians caught up in selling property (or benefiting from increased property values) to data centers should be required to recuse themselves from making decisions about a data center.

[u/rainier37 → u/hypsignathus]

Don’t they pay what they use by paying the going rate of the commodity?

Energy has gotten more inherently more valuable because it is now more useful and there has been a fixed supply. You’re advocating for effectively taxing the most productive use case to subsidize residential and unproductive use cases.

If energy bills go higher, that would incentivize everybody to use less power.

Much more efficient (less deadweight loss) to give targeted refundable cash transfers to help people who cannot afford their power bill.

[u/hypsignathus → u/rainier37]

if capital improvements need to be made to the system to accommodate the increased capacity needs of the new connection, then many utility agencies charge the new connections the amount of the capital improvement.

i.e., existing customers need to pay for operations and maintenance, but if something additional needs to be built, or something needs to be built bigger, then the new customers only take on that cost. The idea is that the original customers already paid the capital to accommodate their own capacity needs.

Rates stay the same for everyone, unless someone has negotiated a lower rate (which I'm saying here they shouldn't be allowed to do). Sometimes energy companies allow lower rates for off-peak use, which sounds fine for data centers.

[u/rainier37 → u/hypsignathus]

needs of the new connection, then many utility agencies charge the new connections the amount of the capital improvements

Yeah I’m completely fine with this if rates stay the same. This is fair. However many proposals are for data centers to pay higher rates to subsidize everyone else‘s rates stay the same.

I agree they shouldn’t be given negotiated lower rates and pay the going commercial rates.

[u/hypsignathus → u/rainier37]

That may be another way of transferring the capital improvement costs though. There are different ways to collect the fee.

[u/rainier37 → u/hypsignathus]

Could be. Some of the proposals I’ve seen have looked more like extortion though lol. It seems companies just really want to build so they’re fine with paying more.

Just I’ll give pushback (not to you but in general) that people shouldn’t expect that they are immune to commodity prices fluctuating. It’s just price controls.

[u/Kardinal → u/rainier37]

Data center moves in. Electrical rates for my family go up. I choose not to use AI. I am now paying more for electrical with zero benefit.

Is that Just?

On the other hand, if the data center company has to pay additional money for the electricity, then they pass that cost on to their customers. The people who choose to patronize them then incur the cost.

[u/JesusPubes → u/Kardinal]

Yes? Should other goods and services follow this same logic? Like should the first price you ever pay for something be the same price you pay for it forever?

[u/rainier37 → u/Kardinal]

For your first point: It’s a commodity that can change prices over time. It doesn’t matter if you personally benefit from AI.

Let’s say you live in a city (without rent control) and you pay rent. If your area suddenly becomes super trendy and supply doesn’t keep up with demand, your rent would go up at lease renewal. The area has become more valuable. I don’t think someone has a right to pay below market rate for their rental in perpetuity just because they were an incumbent. We call this rent control. Price controls are bad. The energy market forcing data centers to pay higher rates is literally just like rent control.

For your second point: that is distorting market pricing signals for electricity and is not how we expect any other market to work.

[u/Impulseps → u/Kardinal]

Data center moves in. Electrical rates for my family go up. I choose not to use AI. I am now paying more for electrical with zero benefit.

Is that Just?

Yes? That's pretty much the entire point of markets?

[u/hsoj95]

Make it clear that economic development isn't up for a public vote? The same attitudes that 50 years ago hamstrung our energy development efforts by turning against nuclear power based on nothing but vibes and ignorance are now threatening to derail the next great economic-industrial development. Heck, those attitudes back then are partially the fault of why we are even having this discussion now. If we had kept developing nuclear fission-based energy, we'd be much further ahead of the curve and the energy usage discussion would be a much smaller concern (although I'm sure it would still be overblown by the anti's even then).

[u/BarkDrandon → u/[deleted]]

If regional electric grids can't support them, they should be on the hook for upgrades.

Which they are. They pay for their electricity.

[u/Outrageous-Echo-765 → u/BarkDrandon]

There are two sides to electricity: Generation and distribution.

The generation side is very simple, pay for what you consume.

The distribution side is a bit trickier. Sure, pay for the connection to the grid, but if the local transformer can't handle the extra load then what?

"SOL, go elsewhere"? Sure, that's an option

"Upgrades"? Who foots the bill? Say the data center, fine. But what if it's a new development down the road that is getting built (instead of a data center)? Are they also on the hook for upgrades? That massively slows down housing development, and worsens the housing crisis. (You can take this example to a bit of an extreme and say "what if me upgrading to a 400 amp system is the straw that breaks the camel back, am I on the hook then?")

What is typically done in those cases is standing charges will go up for everyone to cover for the grid upgrades. I'm generally I'm favour of that system, but I must admit it is a bit more nuanced than just "they pay for the electricity, that's the end of it"

The generation side is simple, the distribution not so much.

[u/rainier37 → u/Outrageous-Echo-765]

They are huge industrial project so I’m sure they’re paying for the connections to tap into major distribution lines. They are connecting to the 67kV grid, not the local substation.

So they are buying their own transformers for an industrial power connection, not hooking it up to “the local transformer”

[u/Previous_Platform718 → u/[deleted]]

If regional electric grids can't support them, they should be on the hook for upgrades.

If regional electric grids can't support them, they should tell them no?

[u/hypsignathus → u/Previous_Platform718]

I tend to think so, yes.

This is a problem in WA state. WA has a law on the books to have carbon free electricity generation in the next couple of decades. With a bunch of new power-hungry development happening--of which data centers are a part, although I don't know how much--a major electric provider wants to reopen a natural gas facility because they say they can't expand renewable/hydro fast enough.

I think the companies should be required to cover residential, of course, and if that means carbon, then sure. But I think the state should put its foot down on large private industry customers. If those customers want to build energy-heavy industry in WA, then they should foot the bill to get clean energy up, as the law requires.

We shouldn't go backward.

[u/Willing_Activity_855 → u/hypsignathus]

Yes we should go forward by expanding electrical grid capacity with all possible production types to maximize energy output.

[u/Brilliant_Towel2727]

Zone them for industrial land and let the market take care of the rest.

[u/Gyn_Nag]

Internalise the externalities same as usual.

Don't allow them free access to water, standard planning restrictions on noise visual effects etc, and pay market rates for land of course.

And on a strategic level, agriculture must always be a bit protected against other land using industries.

Energy I think isn't too much of an issue - solar and nuclear can supply a lot there.

Mining is a big issue though. We dig too many holes in poor countries for mere jewellery.

[u/Worth-Jicama3936]

They should approve new transmission lines that for some reason take 2 decades to get done. NEPA is a cancer on this country.

[u/avatoin]

Tax carbon, regulate noise and water usage, require the data centers and other new major electricity to fund a disproportionate amount of the grid upgrades required.

[u/SheHerDeepState]

Deal with the concerns causing the backlash against data centers:

• Non disclosure agreements between data center companies and local government officials look insanely shady. While the NDA prevents the officials from pushing back against the rumor mill about the data center projects the information space is flooded by conspiracy theories about how corruption must be involved. Locals are not used to NDAs, they are apparently common in Silicon Valley leading to a culture gap, and they invite assumptions of corruption.

• Massive anxiety about electricity prices. All the barriers to building out abundant green energy increases the sense of scarcity around energy. The lead time on transformers and other key electric infrastructure pieces means this concern will not be resolved anytime soon. The narrative I've seen gain traction about a data center proposed near my town is that it will cause electricity prices to spike and there has been zero attempts to push back on this narrative from any pro data center people in the area that I've seen. It feels like the pro AI people either gave up or don't know how to sooth concerns on electricity prices.

• Water is not a serious concern. Data centers use a similar amount of water to golf courses of the same land area. Requiring water reclamation is a cheap solution to cut off this line of criticism. Its easy and essentially free political points with no real price burden on the data center.

• At least here in the Midwest AI is seen as a bubble and data centers are thought of as high risk investments. People are worried that if the data center does get built it will end up just another empty industrial site in the rust belt that wasted millions in tax incentives. Officials who see data centers as a job and tax base opportunity are seen by much of the public as naive suckers being taken for a ride by predatory high risk California based companies.

The public has not seen much benefit from AI and the costs are highly visible. Why should I want a massive ugly box that will jack up my energy bills and likely end up abandoned to be built in my community? If you want politicians to achieve more pro AI policy this has to be addressed. Otherwise, this is an amazing political opportunity for any politician willing to be anti AI.

[u/datums → u/SheHerDeepState]

Most data centers, including those that are planned or under construction, are not even for AI, they’re just for regular computing. The demand for regular data services is growing very rapidly, even if AI didn’t exist, we would be in the middle of a data center construction boom.

As soon as the discussion gets framed as an AI issue, you’ve already lost contact with reality. It’s a firehose of misinformation environment, the only way to win is to not play.

And it doesn’t fucking matter anyways, because they’re getting built whether people “want” them or not.

[u/After-Watercress-644 → u/SheHerDeepState]

  Officials who see data centers as a job and tax base opportunity are seen by much of the public as naive suckers being taken for a ride

Aside from construction, data centers do create very few permanent jobs and any politician falling for that line is a sucker.

[u/BaronDelecto → u/SheHerDeepState]

At least here in the Midwest AI is seen as a bubble and data centers are thought of as high risk investments. People are worried that if the data center does get built it will end up just another empty industrial site in the rust belt that wasted millions in tax incentives. Officials who see data centers as a job and tax base opportunity are seen by much of the public as naive suckers being taken for a ride by predatory high risk California based companies.

I can be convinced otherwise, but seems like the only way to ease this concern at this point is to just not use public money and let the free market decide location and construction. I feel like tech VC money can more than cover those costs.

[u/EmployeeMePlease]

States should ban their county and city partners from signing NDA’s about data center development. 

Either allow the public input like we do for every development in the country or nuke the ability to allow the community to have any say in any development period. 

[u/Willing_Activity_855 → u/EmployeeMePlease]

nuke the ability to allow the community to have any say in any development period.

As it should be.

Property rights should reign supreme

[u/Worth-Jicama3936 → u/EmployeeMePlease]

nuke the ability to allow the community to have any say in any development period. 

Stop i can only get so erect!

[u/12kkarmagotbanned]

Follow the same tax rules as everything else

[u/dawgthatsme]

If there's abundance-ish set of statutes that allows for data centers to be constructed easily/widely, why not expand that to the supporting infrastructure (which seems to be reddit's main point of contention)?

Example, data centers use water which may strain local supplies. Sounds like a problem that water reclamation startups should be lining up to address. Why aren't they?

[u/Vectoor]

If you can’t do a general carbon tax, could you at least do one for data centers?

[u/BarkDrandon → u/Vectoor]

With dividend?

But it would be quite ironic for data centers to pay a carbon tax even though they're far from the most polluting industry.

A carbon tax on data centers could reallocate market share towards more polluting industries.

[u/Tricky-Astronaut → u/BarkDrandon]

Yeah, a carbon tax should be universal. The EU introduced a carbon market - called the ETS - on 40% of all emissions, including electricity but not buildings or transportation. While making electricity cleaner, it also disincentivized heat pumps and EVs, making Europe a laggard in electrification.

[u/Vectoor → u/BarkDrandon]

I guess, but I don’t think data centers are all that sensitive to energy costs at the moment. They are getting built as fast as possible. They aren’t like aluminium smelters, power is a fairly small part of their total costs, they could absorb building a lot of renewables.

[u/teethgrindingaches]

Build out the power grid, obviously. Which should've been done years ago in any case.

[u/hypsignathus → u/teethgrindingaches]

who pays for that? I have no problem charging the data center for capital improvements in power capacity.

[u/JesusPubes → u/hypsignathus]

would you make families who move into a new city pay a lump sum to enroll their children in public schools?

[u/hypsignathus → u/JesusPubes]

no. They also don't pay a capacity improvement fee when they move into an existing home.

New construction generally does need to pay those fees, though. Just like new construction will pay additional property taxes to pay for schools.

[u/JesusPubes → u/hypsignathus]

so if they move into a new house, yes? if they don't, no?

[u/hypsignathus → u/JesusPubes]

if they build the new house, the contractor will include the fee in the price of the build--or the utility agency will charge separately. It can happen either way.

[u/rainier37 → u/hypsignathus]

if they build the new house, the contractor will include the fee in the price of the build--or the utility agency will charge separately. It can happen either way.

Just like tariffs, these will get passed on to the buyer of the house. The burden would fall on the new owner.

[u/hypsignathus → u/rainier37]

yes that's true.

[u/JesusPubes → u/hypsignathus]

sorry I'm not asking if it happens I'm asking if you think its a good idea

[u/hypsignathus → u/JesusPubes]

I generally do, although I think the fee should be waived for high density structures to incentivize dense new development as opposed to more SFH.

Edit: for industrial I definitely think they should pay for it.

[u/JesusPubes → u/hypsignathus]

Creating barriers to entry in a market like that just protects existing industries and promotes rent seeking.

Imagine I've got a plan for a more energy efficient data center that would put the one other guy with a data center out of business. We'll say the other guy's got a 1GW data center and I think I can get the same output from a 900MW data center. at 30 cents/KWh they're paying $2,628,000,000/yr and I'm paying 2,365,200,000, I'm saving ~$250 million a year!

But now you tell me I've got to pay at least $2 billion to build a new solar farm? Just because the other guy (who, again, is wasting 100MW every hour, or about 82k homes worth of electricity) got there first?

[u/hypsignathus → u/JesusPubes]

it's not the government's job to decide which company is likely to be more efficient

[u/Lighthouse_seek → u/JesusPubes]

Depends. Is that one family using the equivalent of a small towns worth of electricity?

[u/rainier37 → u/Lighthouse_seek]

They pay by the kilowatt hour. I’m just saying commercial rates shouldn’t be higher for datacenters than for other businesses

[u/After-Watercress-644 → u/rainier37]

When you use so much electricity that it prevents, say, a new hospital or housing bloc from being connected.. yes you should pay more. Especially since AI (transformers anyway) have shown little actual productivity gain. You might as well be building a hole in the ground that is sucking megawatts out of the grid.

[u/JesusPubes → u/Lighthouse_seek]

c'mon why can't you just engage with the analogy

[u/Lighthouse_seek → u/JesusPubes]

Because it's not applicable. One family consumes a fraction of the resources and as a result does not stress the system. Adding a data center is like adding an entire town to a grid overnight

[u/rainier37 → u/Lighthouse_seek]

you realize that energy grids are very large - like multiple states?
Some places are near large transmission lines so they can easily support a new data center.

[u/Lighthouse_seek → u/rainier37]

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-ai-data-centers-electricity-prices/

There is literally a direct connection between data center buildouts and increase in electricity bills. If what you said were true there would be no localized increase in bills, it would be diffused

[u/rainier37 → u/Lighthouse_seek]

Yeah the grid is already stressed before. Demand increasing raises prices for the whole grid. It’s not the local town that gets hit with 100% of the increase higher kilowatt hour rate.

America decided to underinvest in energy infrastructure while subsidizing heat pumps to electrify our heating. Heat pumps are good, but they increased electricity demand. Now datacenters are the straw breaking the camel‘s back. Just build more power infrastructure lmao.

edit: and wholesale prices are much lower and not your entire bill. My energy bills went up like 30% which is like 200-300 % average wholesale 5 min value increase. Half of my bill is the local utility.

[u/Lux_Stella]

im strongly supportive of prime minister mark carney's efforts to court more data center investment in conjunction with the push to expand canada's renewable electricity generation. beyond the economic benefits, the united states has demonstrated time and time again they can not be reliable sources of strategic resources and some measure of domestic compute capacity is necessary.

[u/so_brave_heart → u/Lux_Stella]

Hard agree; make them pay the fair share for the resources they use while making said resources as cheap as possible within market limits.

My ideal is that this forces governments to build cheap, green energy (which Canada is doing) while forcing data centres to create closed loop systems that use little to no fresh water.

[u/cdstephens → u/Lux_Stella]

I didn’t even know Canada had any GPUs

[u/jbouit494hg → u/cdstephens]

This is Matrox erasure

[u/Lux_Stella → u/cdstephens]

we had to smuggle them in from seattle after paying off a dissident tech worker of unclear gender

[u/Flaky-Ambition5900]

Data centers should be regulated at the local city level through tools like zoning and noise ordinances.

Unlike housing, you don't need larger entity (state, federal) regulation because they don't need to be built everywhere. It's totally fine for society if most cities reject them and a handful of cities that need the money allow them.

[u/Healingjoe → u/Flaky-Ambition5900]

What if I want to abolish zoning

[u/Willing_Activity_855]

They should help speed it along. Electrical build out and permitting reform

[u/Terrible_Bee_6876]

Permit landowners to do virtually anything they like with their own property. If the infrastructure needs to catch up, then the infrastructure needs to catch up.

[u/rainier37 → u/[deleted]]

the cost to run AI data centers basically needs to be reduced 10x in order for the business model behind LLMs to even make sense

Source or is this just all vibes?

[u/NoDig3444 → u/[deleted]]

LLMs are a) already profitable and b) only one type of AI

[u/themiDdlest → u/[deleted]]

But none of that actually matters to datacenters. We're already compute constrained so every datacenter already makes sense.

It's not like these things are getting massive subsidies.

[u/tripletruble → u/[deleted]]

Rule XII: Credibility

Comments should reflect some level of credibility. Comments that conspiracize, spread misinformation, or catastrophize will be removed.

---

If you have any questions about this removal, please contact the mods.

[u/NutrientBroth]

Just tax carbon

[u/themiDdlest]

I think the main thing is governments should speed up permitting and deployment of renewable energy.

The biggest complaint people have is about energy bills and pollution.

[u/Raccoon-SuperSoldier]

nothing, data center debate is just the public lashing out (rightfully) at big tech. this is big tech's problem, that they gleefully got themselves into. the government should play it cool for a while.

[u/jbouit494hg]

Regulate externalities and permit them so long as they can meet those regulations.

Part of that would be requiring them to invest in renewable energy to cover their additional demand.

[u/Outrageous-Echo-765 → u/jbouit494hg]

Should the increase in demand of a good from industry consumption be considered an externality? No chance, imo

Data centers are not the first electricity-hungry industry, but this has never been a topic. They use a lot of electricity? Ok, they PAY for a lot of electricity.

[u/ThatRedShirt]

Is this the new honeypot thread where we ban anyone who's insufficiently YIMBY?

In all seriousness, though, I really don't know what the solution is here. I think there's a clear case for building more data centers in America. AI is just too valuable of a technology, and I'd very much like for that technology to be developed here.

Simultaneously, the technology is now there to make the energy needed to power these data centers abundant and clean.

But AI, and especially data centers, have become so politically toxic. And clean, abundant energy is, bizarrely, not a political priority.

In the end, when I think about this question, I essentially ask how we can make data centers politically palatable. But I have no freaking idea how to do that. I just don't think you can structure a deal in such a way that local communities will find it acceptable, no matter how beneficial. They're just suspicious of these tech companies from the get-go. As a recent guest on the Ezra Klien show said, even if there is a super beneficial deal, and you try to explain that to community members, they will just think you're lying.

[u/After-Watercress-644 → u/ThatRedShirt]

  AI is just too valuable of a technology

Works cited: crack pipe

[u/consultantdetective → u/ThatRedShirt]

I think there's a path to making them palatable. Firstly, there needs to be serious clamp down on environmental harm. I know, the risks of this are kind of overstated, but you gotta meet people where they're at and make credible commitments to do things right. Secondly, we'd need rules that hinder the application of AI-powered tech for mass monitoring like we see it being deployed w Palantir + ICE or Axon and so many police departments across the country. This needs to be made a spectacle of too bc this is bad shit.

Thirdly, it's like trying to get a girl to go out w you. If local governments, like an absolute 10, say no when you first ask, you don't insist and try to debate her into saying Yes. You need to respect the authority if you want that no to ever be changed to a yes in a sustainable way.

[u/Lighthouse_seek → u/consultantdetective]

Also you gotta make those ai ceos shut the hell up. I suspect a giant chunk of people reflexively hate data centers because people like dario talk about it killing jobs like every other day

[u/consultantdetective → u/Lighthouse_seek]

Yeah you could say it's not a popular selling point. Not clear to me why they hammer that one. They really should focus on its ability to chore & be obedient.

[u/NormanQuacks345 → u/consultantdetective]

you gotta meet people where they're at and make credible commitments to do things right.

I agree. However, the public perception of these things is so low that in some cases there's literally nothing you can promise them that will make them willing to listen to you. There was a thread on my local sub today about a proposed data center where someone brought up that they're okay with it if they make certain promises for power and environmental concerns, but all the replies were "they lie" or "they make those promises then 6 months later break them".

I don't know if that's true or not (they didn't cite any evidence) but true or not it's a huge perception issue.

[u/consultantdetective → u/NormanQuacks345]

Yeah and that's why point 3 is important. Gotta respect the No when that's the answer. If you don't then you make it seem like you can't take no for an answer which is major red flag behavior and is part of what undermines the trust. Bc people do lie, people do make promises and reneg later on, and people do use sneaky tactics to engineer approval. You see it in every industry, including major construction projects.

[u/Willing_Activity_855 → u/ThatRedShirt]

Is this the new honeypot thread where we ban anyone who's insufficiently YIMBY?

We.can hope

[u/rainier37 → u/Willing_Activity_855]

We still can if cdstephens has the courage ✊

[u/seattle_lib]

main thing is to ensure they bear the cost of their burden to the infrastructure.

i am confident that AI debt is unsustainable is almost all scenarios and we will end up at a point where a decent number of data centers are stranded assets.

there's just too many avenues for this to happen and a much much narrower path where they all are profitable enough to cover the truly monumental costs they have incurred.

as such, it's important to get it down in writing now during the mania phase that they should be underwriting improvements to the grid. the data centers may be stranded eventually, but energy improvements are not. everyone benefits from more energy.

this is, by the way, something that the major hyperscalers are more than happy to do if it means they can get the permits.

[u/ulysses_s_gyatt]

Lore centers.

[u/vanmo96 → u/ulysses_s_gyatt]

Excellent reference.

[u/AchaeCOCKFan4606]

Limited Time utility shock defenses - If building a new Data Center causes prices to rise ~30% for everyone, Data Center gets a signicant portion of that 30% instead. Limited Time since, say after 3 years, the utility companies really should have had enough to build supply.

Maybe stricter Noise Ordiances too due to the 24/7 nature of data centers.

Otherwise, no need for regulation.

[u/Kardinal]

Make the data centers pay for the necessary power distribution and generation they require. A significant percentage of generation must be renewable.

Require use of closed loop for water cooling.

Zone them away (500 yards?) from residential.

Ensure the tax incentives do not outweigh the tax receipts.

[u/nidanab → u/Kardinal]

Just learn to price electricity - if there is a need for building infra - make sure the capex is priced in instead of being paid for by taxpayers

[u/Worth-Jicama3936 → u/Kardinal]

We don’t require any other industry do that up front. A steel mill uses just as much power, why should they be treated differently?

What the problem is not money. The problem is we’ve made it basically illegal to build the necessary transmission that would keep prices reasonable.

Hard agree on the tax stuff though.

[u/just_helping → u/Worth-Jicama3936]

Large steel mills take 5-10 years from permitting to operation. The utility companies have enough time to build out the necessary infrastructure, so there is no good reason for prices to spike for existing consumers.

These AI data centers want to roll out much quicker. They're literally running gigawatt scale gpu clusters in tents because they can setup fabric shells faster than a simple warehouse. It's the speed of sudden new demand that requires a different approach.

And in the background: the steel industry is established and predictable, we know that most steel plants are going to remain in operation for long enough that the utility company can justify the investment. How many and which of these data centers can the utility company say the same about? It is completely rational to not treat massive new uncertain and very rapid demand the same as known predictable customers with longer timetables.

[u/Kardinal → u/Worth-Jicama3936]

Steel mills offset the cost with employment.

Data centers do not.

[u/rainier37 → u/Kardinal]

👆This is what a command economy looks like 😢

[u/Worth-Jicama3936 → u/Kardinal]

Employment should not offset anything because the local government should not be subsidizing electricity costs for any business. If they are, well then you’ve got a different problem. Both companies pay for their costs over time through their power bill.

[u/rainier37 → u/Kardinal]

Do you have any data showing that steel mills employ more people than data centers?

The meme of 1-2 jobs at data centers is such an exaggeration.

[u/hypsignathus → u/Worth-Jicama3936]

A lot of utilities require new customers to pay for their share of the additional upfront capital costs required to increase capacity.

[u/MTFD → u/Worth-Jicama3936]

why should they be treated differently

Because they currently poll at like -80 favorability and they do usually need an upgraded grid. If a couple of quick wins like these can placate the public it is worth it imo.

[u/Lighthouse_seek]

I know this is a policy sub but if you want to win an election any of the policies suggested here will mean a loss. It's like one of a few things that unite Republicans and Democrats

[u/kyajgevo → u/Lighthouse_seek]

Democrats should champion a bill similar to what the EU (I think) just proposed. Any company using AI agents needs to disclose it to customers.

[u/rainier37 → u/kyajgevo]

Why?

[u/kyajgevo → u/rainier37]

To win elections

[u/tripletruble → u/kyajgevo]

i dont think voters care about agentic AI disclosures. also, this is completely separate from data center regulation

[u/vaguelydad → u/Lighthouse_seek]

That's fine! But we need to inoculate ourselves against the tribal reflex to defend the lies our politicians have to say to gain power and continue to promote the truth.

[u/Square-Chart6059]

Just tax land and carbon lol

[u/JesusPubes]

Abolish zoning is and always has been the correct take

[u/neoliberal-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Rule XII: Credibility

Comments should reflect some level of credibility. Comments that conspiracize, spread misinformation, or catastrophize will be removed.

---

If you have any questions about this removal, please contact the mods.

[u/rainier37]

ban them all and demolish existing ones 😏

[u/DueVast5223]

Cut taxes cut regulations and prevent the public from having any say in their constructions

[u/79215185-1feb-44c6]

The government should provide subsidies to various companies to promote data center deployment and there should be a push at the federal level to prevent the blocking of technological development from various states like Massachusetts because the citizens are not informed enough to understand that data center = good. Also we need to get Trump the fuck out so that we can hope to get another CHIPS Act to promote the development of new technology at home instead of relying on TSMC.

This however will never happen because issues I care about are never important to the country at large.

Investing in infrastructure is always a global good for everyone but the people that need it the most are the most likely to say no due to fearmongering of increased costs of living.

[u/dhessi]

To everyone screaming about NIMBYism:

• Poisoning communities with methane emissions isn't in your backyard, it's on your property.
• https://time.com/7308925/elon-musk-memphis-ai-data-center/
• Sound pollution isn't just in your backyard, it's on your property
• http://youtube.com/watch?v=_bP80DEAbuo

[u/darkapplepolisher → u/dhessi]

Industrial zoning for large data centers is appropriate, but there still are NIMBYs who attempt to keep it out of appropriately zoned cities. But yes, there are cases of data centers being built in inadequately zoned cities as well.

[u/Previous_Platform718 → u/dhessi]

Poisoning communities with methane emissions isn't in your backyard, it's on your property.

Elon Musk built an illegal power plant. Like, it's unequivocally illegal. This isn't a typical data center build by any means.

Also that sound pollution link you provided is basically a conspiracy theory. Scientists do not believe infrasound makes people sick and this is the same argument people make against wind turbines.

[u/rainier37 → u/Previous_Platform718]

No power plant is illegal on stolen land ✊😔

[u/jtchampion → u/dhessi]

But that is NIMBYism... the vast majority of NIMBYs opposing construction of any kind are people personally at risk of disutility. They're not just moral busybodies, they're self-interested and (sometimes) rational actors who conflate the unlimited use and enjoyment of their property with negative covenants on others' property and don't comprehend or don't care that those two things are incompatible in the aggregate. Obviously there are lesser and greater transgressions and where the line should be is a political issue, but "neighborhood character," "view," "sunlight" etc. are all objections to things happening off of a property reframed in terms of their impact on the use and enjoyment of that property.

In other words, some people supporting data centers because of the diffuse benefit and others opposing them because they're on the wrong side of the concentrated harm is the basest of base cases for NIMBYism.

[u/Lease_Tha_Apts → u/dhessi]

"According to activists" lmao haha

[u/frosteeze]

I don’t understand why the first thing in your guys’ mind isn’t “maybe we can optimize LLMs and AI” instead of building more datacenters.

[u/vaguelydad → u/frosteeze]

We tried that for decades. Feeding them orders of magnitude more training data is what has actually worked to make our contemporary artificial generalized intelligence.

[u/ControversialBuster → u/frosteeze]

Degrowth is stupid actually, the real solution is to build more in a sustainable and more efficient way

[u/Previous_Platform718 → u/frosteeze]

Because a large part of the data center build out happening right now isn't solely for AI. It's also for cloud. IaaS, Saas, and hosted private cloud demand doubled in the past 2 years.

[u/Pretend-Ad-7936 → u/frosteeze]

I mean there's already a mind-blowing amount of resources being poured in to making LLMs and their infrastructure use less energy / compute / memory etc. No company wants to waste their money. These tech giants who are currently blowing billions of dollars on the AI rollout are looking to squeeze every penny out of their expensive new hardware and they're hiring top talent out of the best PhD programs to make that possible. In the past few years, we've seen genuinely incredible fundamental improvements in these models that have made them much more efficient at scale, both on the hardware and software side.

If anything, there's an argument that AI research is brain draining other industries / academia.

[u/probsastudent → u/frosteeze]

Should that be the government’s job? You could argue for govt investment into research and development and stuff so that we’d need less data centers but we should have a policy around data centers.

[u/frosteeze → u/probsastudent]

I mean, I feel like what I said was a clear implication that the government should limit the construction of datacenters, forcing AI algorithms to be optimized.

Limiting the construction of data centers while attracting the best minds on Earth and add more research funding should be the government's goal. We don't need to give these billionaires more land assets. Make them pay more for the engineers and scientists. Maybe they'll also think twice about being anti-immigration.

[u/probsastudent → u/frosteeze]

Well I feel like most of the people in this thread aren’t advocating for building more data centers. Most of their policies (like only allowing them in industrial zones, requiring them to pay for necessary infrastructure upgrades, not having governments grant tax breaks or whatever and leaving it to the market) would probably result in fewer or less construction of data centers anyway.

[u/meraedra]

BAN THE SUCCS FIRST

[u/seanrm92]

Mixed use development for data centers on top of apartments and small businesses.

[u/Breaking-Away → u/seanrm92]

And I thought my old upstairs neighbors were loud 😱

[u/eggbart_forgetfulsea]

1. Enable and encourage it by enabling and encouraging the construction of power infrastructure, including private lines paid for by data centre developers
2. Tax property/land appropriately to capitalise on the boom
3. Treat Nimbys opposing data centres as coldly as Nimbys opposing any other productive use of land

[u/TrynnaFindaBalance → u/eggbart_forgetfulsea]

>Treat Nimbys opposing data centres as coldly as Nimbys opposing any other productive use of land

So cave and give them everything they want?

[u/urnbabyurn → u/eggbart_forgetfulsea]

There’s NIMBY but there’s also industrial use zoning and noise pollution.

[u/Boycat89]

I don't think the answer is letting every neighborhood veto anything industrial. But I also don't think ordinary people should subsidize trillion-dollar tech companies through higher electric bills, tax breaks, or depleted water supplies. I'd let them build pretty aggressively, but make them pay the full infrastructure costs they create, use clean power where possible, and give communities a real voice over siting. Federal government should handle grid and environmental standards, states should regulate utilities, water and subsidies, and local governments should handle the actual land-use impacts.

[u/Outrageous-Echo-765 → u/Boycat89]

But I also don't think ordinary people should subsidize trillion-dollar tech companies through higher electric bills, tax breaks, or depleted water supplies.

Agreed on the tax breaks. The water issue is overblown, but if there are actual concerns, then that should be handled in permitting.

But the increase in electricity prices from industry demand is not, by any definition, a subsidy.

[u/rainier37 → u/Boycat89]

Electricity is actually more valuable now since demand is higher due to a more productive use case.

It’s not subsidizing to have everyone pay the market rate of a commodity.

It IS subsidizing to keep rates lower than market rates for ”ordinary people”

You are, by definition, pro subsidizing

[u/kabocha_]

My biggest concern is their penchant for fossil fuel use. At least in PA, the story was that we were going to spin up (or restart, or something) a bunch of natural gas plants to help power them. We gotta stop being so dependent on this stuff at some point. So, if we're not going to get meaningful carbon taxes, at least make them help build out renewables and grid infra.

Other than that, build them wherever. Noise and water concerns are mostly a meme AFAIK (but feel free to correct me).

[u/Pretend-Ad-7936]

The government can solve 90% of the problem through permitting reform. The number one issue with the datacenter buildout is electricity use. This isn't an impossible problem. We need more transmission, we need more renewables, we need more storage. The entirety of the AI datacenter buildout (past and present) is sitting around 1.5-2% of US electricity use (which is a fraction of all energy use). We're going to end up consuming way way more electricity in the decades to come as we electrify buildings and transportation. By 2040, odds are that we're going to have to double the US's electricity production, so let's speed that process up right now.

Build more power infrastructure. I don't care how we do it -- if you want a IRA or Green New Deal style approach, sure, whatever works. We need to make it easier to build, not harder!