Pro-Data Center Group Spends Hundreds of Thousands to Oppose Community Concerns
Nationally and right here in North Carolina, the active debate continues about the supposed benefits of data centers versus the environmental harm (air pollution and massive water usage) and the cost passed on to utility customers. A Virginia-based pro-data center group, North Carolina Connects, recently began a major advertising campaign to amplify the business and economic benefits of data centers, while pushing back against criticisms – including significant water usage and increased utility costs.
Big Tech Masquerades as Community Ally
The leadership of the group also serves as the leaders of Data Center Coalition, a pro-industry lobbying group. Among its members are Google, Microsoft and CyrusOne — which operate major data centers in North Carolina — and Amazon, which is building a $10 billion data center campus in Richmond County. CyrusOne, which operates a data center near Research Triangle Park, has proposed a $900 million data center in Lee County, despite the opposition of some residents.
While one of the groups’ ads says data centers pay for “every watt they use,” it doesn’t address that they pay lower rates for that power than residential customers, and it doesn’t say anything about paying for the infrastructure needed to generate and deliver electricity – which is part of the $103 billion Duke Energy plans to spend over the next ten years to build. Duke’s Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Brian Savoy said earlier this year that data centers are expected to comprise about 75% of the economic development-driven load growth by the end of 2030.
We Like Scorecards – New Data Center Tracker from Climate Power
To help keep score on data center pollution and clean energy usage, national climate advocacy group Climate Power just released a new tool to track major pollution by hyper-scale data centers – the Data Center Air Pollution Tracker.
Today, all of the hyperscaler tech companies’ operating data centers in the country are powered through the local energy grid or via gas-fired power plants on-site. Where tech companies build and how they power their facilities can have drastically different impacts on local air pollution and global greenhouse gas emissions.
This scorecard evaluates the eight hyperscaler tech / AI companies with U.S.-based data centers on one simple question: are their data centers running on clean energy, or fossil fuels like gas, oil, and coal? Each company is scored on a 0–100 scale, with 100 representing entirely clean power, based on two factors: whether they burn gas behind the meter (BTM) on-site, and how clean the electrical grid is where they build.
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Stay tuned next week for more on the Richmond/Amazon data center. We will keep you informed as all of these issues move forward. Take action today to support our on going work!
