527
‘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?