~by Senator Jesse Green
Public and government concern over data centers has spiked recently for understandable reasons. While these facilities have existed for decades, the boom in new technology requires a massive wave of construction. This rapid growth has sparked intense debate about how we should manage them. After hearing concerning comments and misinformation at a recent county supervisor forum, I decided to do my own research and fact finding. I recently spoke with a city official in Minnesota whose leadership team initially opposed a proposed data center. However, after touring an active facility in West Des Moines and gathering accurate information, they completely changed their minds and strongly supported the project for their community.
We must first answer, what is a data center? Think of a data center as a massive warehouse filled with computer servers. These facilities power the internet, cloud storage, streaming apps, and artificial intelligence (AI). Nearly every digital action we take today relies on them. The rise of AI has drastically increased the demand for these centers. AI technology requires much more power and generates far more heat than traditional digital services which forces us to confront major energy and water challenges.
Generating enough electricity is not going to be the primary issue. The real challenge is grid delivery and ensuring power is available exactly when and where it is needed. This forces communities to answer a critical question: who pays for the new energy infrastructure – the consumers on the grid or the developer? Generally under current practices, the developers, not ratepayers, fund interconnections and grid upgrades.
The next issue is how to cool the data centers and water usage. Traditional methods rely on heavy air conditioning or water-based cooling. Advanced systems have innovated and use closed loop water systems which drastically reduce the amount of water needed. With these innovations, data centers will use less than 0.5% of our nation’s water needs. To help put in context of what centers are currently using in North America, they consume about the same amount as New York City in the period of a year.
Every issue like this one crosses over into the political arena. The debate over data centers crosses traditional party lines, creating unique political dynamics. Conservatives focus heavily on property rights, maintaining local government control, and avoiding corporate subsidies. Liberals tend to focus on environmental impacts, water consumption, potential rising energy costs, and the government incentives going to private corporations. Support comes from economic development groups, local officials eyeing massive new tax revenues, labor unions, energy companies, and tech developers looking for community growth. On the economic development side, it’s important to see this issue from their lens. Generally, a single facility costs $1–3B in capital expenditures, has 1,000–1,500 construction jobs over 2–4 years, 50–150 permanent operations jobs, and $5–15M/yr in local property tax, a lot of which flows to school districts. To put that in perspective in Boone County, the additional property tax revenue would cover roughly one third of the entire annual budget.
For many of us, our number one fear is that data centers could eventually swallow up most of our rural cornfields. From what I have gathered, the reality is that most centers are built where the population and demand are highest. For example, Virginia and Texas hold the highest concentrations of these facilities. Texas offers cheap power and a high density of tech companies. Virginia serves the massive data needs of Washington, D.C., and national defense infrastructure. Those states also have much cheaper land than Iowa. Due to these issues, I do not anticipate many being built in Iowa, but we need to make sure we have the right policies in place at all levels of government.
As we move forward we all must look past the rumors and do some homework. Finding the right path forward will require wisdom, objective research, and careful planning. I hope this newsletter serves as a helpful starting point for anyone looking to form an educated opinion on this critical issue.
