577
‘Irresponsible’: backlash as Utah approves datacenter twice the size of Manhattan
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 13 May 2026
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Not all data centres are evil and the issue is nuanced. This one sounds pretty evil though.
9GW is totally insane and they're building a gas plant for it instead of renewables (although there's some solar too). It's closed loop so the water use fears once it's running are probably a bit overblown, but the construction itself is going to be ecologically insane. The thing is basically a data city, 162 square km is even larger than a lot of cities and involves building an entire power plant and new energy infrastructure. Building it is a full megaproject and even just noise pollution and the construction impacts will mess with bird migration etc. Obviously the whole thing isn't going to be full of data centre, some of that space is empty but still.
It's also going to have the US military as a major client so... Pretty high up there on the evil scale IMO.
Wym not all AI data centers?
I mean they're not all for AI and they're not all environmentally devastating.
This one very much is.
Which aren't environmentally devastating?
There are quite a few. The best ones are sustainable closed loop datacenters with on-site solar which is becoming pretty common across the world, especially for new builds. Often producing more power than they need and feeding it back to the grid (especially if the local government has an energy buy back scheme).
But most data centers are pretty tiny and just built into an office building with a bunch of server racks.
Depending on where you live, a quick web search for data centers in your local area will probably show up dozens of them of varying quality hosting people's websites and business apps etc. They aren't any scarier than anything else you find in a city. They're critical infrastructure that helps make the internet a thing. In most cases, if it wasn't a datacenter, it would be a car yard or a factory, etc.
But! There are also truly evil datacenters. Like this insane Utah monstrosity built for a shitty purpose and the size of a freaking city. An obscene monument to the US tech cesspool's hubris.