To your point, Michael – a simple “data center” search in Halcyon Search shows 13,708 filings, dockets, and regulatory documents mentioning data centers in 2024 alone.
For 2025, we’ve already surpassed that with 13,985 – and we’re only in October!
This article comes at the perfect time. I completely agree, the scale of this data center build-out is truly astonishing. It makes you wonder how quickly the infrastructure can even keep up. Great insigts.
Thanks for this Michael. Besides electrical power, what about the use of precious fresh water? We have a small center going up in my region about to be approved, but last minute reporting by local independent news magazine revealed the strain it will put on our primary water supply. The whole thing was overlooked because they were to offset the water usage with a taxation— however that tax doesn’t enable us to “create” more water in our reservoir! Thanks for your thoughts…
I don't want to speak for anyone too much, but it really depends on your municipality and the type of cooling being utilized by the data center. It definitely could put a strain on freshwater resources from a supply perspective.
In theory, any water being used to cool via a heat exchanger should be returned to its source, either after treatment at a wastewater facility or bypassing that step, depending on local regulations. But that's not a certainty if, say, you're near the coast. In that case, your city water could come from a reservoir, but the discharge (either directly or indirectly as I stated above) could go to a local river and then out to sea. In that case, you are correct that taxation will not offset that loss. Maybe that money could be used to make infrastructure improvements?
TLDR; it's definitely possible that it affects your local water supply, but we'd need more specifics to figure out how much.
Thanks for the prompt response. We’re in Roanoke, in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and the new Google data center is in the town of Daleville. We have a cove reservoir sourced by several local municipalities. The concern is we occasionally have had droughts that put a strain on availability, and we all know the climate changes make that a more likely occurrence. I don’t believe the plans are to return the water there from the data center, but as you write, it’ll go into the Roanoke River and ultimately head to the ocean. Like so many communities, the board of supervisors was over-eager to tout it all as “jobs” and adding to the tax base, with little concern for resources.
A couple of these monstrosities are being put up in my area. Microsoft pulled out of one recently, but there's still another two more that current estimates say will consume as much power as all the homes in the state combined. Our grids are not ready for the increased consumption.
We know that pretty much all of the NVIDIA infrastructure will be essentially useless (in terms of AI, anyhow, within 5 years, if not sooner).
We can surmise that all this infrastructure will have been built out with taxpayer funds, because when it becomes apparent that the Emperor Has No Clothes… the Bros will be bailed out to the tune of somewhere between Half and a Trillion bucks.
We can also surmise that this buildout is not by inspired well meaning boobs trying to improve the world, but to create an infrastructure that can be employed as a key tool in a surveillance infrastructure serving to propagandize, monitor, and disrupt a public resistant to full autocracy.
We MAY also feel silly for paying to construct our own panopticon.
What are *your* predictions for where we end up? One company winning out quickly while others fail? Everyone continuing to invest aggressively for years? Models from other countries passing models from US companies?
The gap between how fast these gigawatt data centres are going up versus how long power infrastructure takes to build is wild. Your tracker sounds valuable for understanding this!
To your point, Michael – a simple “data center” search in Halcyon Search shows 13,708 filings, dockets, and regulatory documents mentioning data centers in 2024 alone.
For 2025, we’ve already surpassed that with 13,985 – and we’re only in October!
This article comes at the perfect time. I completely agree, the scale of this data center build-out is truly astonishing. It makes you wonder how quickly the infrastructure can even keep up. Great insigts.
Thanks for this Michael. Besides electrical power, what about the use of precious fresh water? We have a small center going up in my region about to be approved, but last minute reporting by local independent news magazine revealed the strain it will put on our primary water supply. The whole thing was overlooked because they were to offset the water usage with a taxation— however that tax doesn’t enable us to “create” more water in our reservoir! Thanks for your thoughts…
I don't want to speak for anyone too much, but it really depends on your municipality and the type of cooling being utilized by the data center. It definitely could put a strain on freshwater resources from a supply perspective.
In theory, any water being used to cool via a heat exchanger should be returned to its source, either after treatment at a wastewater facility or bypassing that step, depending on local regulations. But that's not a certainty if, say, you're near the coast. In that case, your city water could come from a reservoir, but the discharge (either directly or indirectly as I stated above) could go to a local river and then out to sea. In that case, you are correct that taxation will not offset that loss. Maybe that money could be used to make infrastructure improvements?
TLDR; it's definitely possible that it affects your local water supply, but we'd need more specifics to figure out how much.
Thanks for the prompt response. We’re in Roanoke, in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and the new Google data center is in the town of Daleville. We have a cove reservoir sourced by several local municipalities. The concern is we occasionally have had droughts that put a strain on availability, and we all know the climate changes make that a more likely occurrence. I don’t believe the plans are to return the water there from the data center, but as you write, it’ll go into the Roanoke River and ultimately head to the ocean. Like so many communities, the board of supervisors was over-eager to tout it all as “jobs” and adding to the tax base, with little concern for resources.
Great post
A couple of these monstrosities are being put up in my area. Microsoft pulled out of one recently, but there's still another two more that current estimates say will consume as much power as all the homes in the state combined. Our grids are not ready for the increased consumption.
What do we absolutely KNOW so far..?
We know that LLMs won’t scale to AGI.
We know that pretty much all of the NVIDIA infrastructure will be essentially useless (in terms of AI, anyhow, within 5 years, if not sooner).
We can surmise that all this infrastructure will have been built out with taxpayer funds, because when it becomes apparent that the Emperor Has No Clothes… the Bros will be bailed out to the tune of somewhere between Half and a Trillion bucks.
We can also surmise that this buildout is not by inspired well meaning boobs trying to improve the world, but to create an infrastructure that can be employed as a key tool in a surveillance infrastructure serving to propagandize, monitor, and disrupt a public resistant to full autocracy.
We MAY also feel silly for paying to construct our own panopticon.
Good analysis, Michael.
Well done.
If anything was ever unsustainable this growth is unsustainable.
And it's not good. https://outlawedbyjp.substack.com/s/a-primer-on-data-centers-and-the
Wow, very detailed write up, thanks for sharing!
What are *your* predictions for where we end up? One company winning out quickly while others fail? Everyone continuing to invest aggressively for years? Models from other countries passing models from US companies?
Is it possible to end/eradicate AI? This increasing AI stuff seems much too dangerous to me.
The gap between how fast these gigawatt data centres are going up versus how long power infrastructure takes to build is wild. Your tracker sounds valuable for understanding this!
https://outlawedbyjp.substack.com/p/lawyers-for-data-centers-admit-they