#data-centers

#data-centers

"In the next couple of years, it's going to be 600 kilowatts, and then we're going to a megawatt," Tim Heidel, CEO of Veir, told TechCrunch.

A critical turning point in this development occurred in October when Minnesota state regulators greenlit the acquisition of Allete by asset management behemoth BlackRock - set to become Allete's majority stakeholder - and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. Allete owns Minnesota Power, the main electric utility in northern Minnesota. The approval came against significant community opposition and, as Truthout previously reported, an administrative law judge's report that strongly recommended against the deal.

Two of the world's biggest data center developers have projects in Nvidia Corp.'s hometown that may sit empty for years because the local utility isn't ready to supply electricity. In Santa Clara, California, where the world's biggest supplier of artificial-intelligence chips is based, Digital Realty Trust Inc. applied in 2019 to build a data center. Roughly six years later, the development remains an empty shell awaiting full energization.

Savills puts this down to the limited availability of new facilities coming to the market, rather than a lack of demand. The underlying strength of demand, it said, is reflected in the total contracted power capacity, which has risen to nearly 14,500MW, up 12% year-on-year. Around a quarter of take-up is now pre-let compared with less than 20% three years ago.

Voter anger over the cost of living is hurtling forward into next year's midterm elections, when pivotal contests will be decided by communities that are home to fast-rising electric bills or fights over who's footing the bill to power Big Tech's energy-hungry data centers. Electricity costs were a key issue in this week's elections for governor in New Jersey and Virginia, a data center hotspot, and in Georgia, where Democrats ousted two Republican incumbents for seats on the state's utility regulatory commission.

At first, the renderings looked like progress for the majority-Black town: glass-and-concrete buildings promising jobs, innovation, and a future rooted in Big Tech. But the fine print told a different story: a complex that would level 700 acres of forest, swallow nearly 2 million gallons of water a day, and draw enough electricity to power a city the size of Seattle. What officials pitched as transformation began to feel, to Simelton, like extraction.

And the features - wow! What a treat to have Tony Davis' perspective in such a balanced piece (" Dried out in Phoenix "), giving us not only up-to-the minute news but sorely needed context - history, politics, the law - along with a view from the desert floor. He painted a picture (with the help of wonderful photographs) of those isolated suburban areas I won't soon forget.

In July of this year, I flew 11,000 kilometers from Buenos Aires to take a course on artificial intelligence policy and law at the University of Leuven in Belgium, a vast neo-Gothic structure founded in 1425 where today, across its various campuses, 57,000 students study a wide variety of disciplines. Halfway through the class, the lecturer divided us into groups and gave us the assignment for a group exam: The environmental footprint is overrated.

Aerospace engineer KR Sridhar always dreamed big: He used to work with NASA on technology to convert carbon dioxide into oxygen to support life on other planets or let humans breathe air on Mars. But as the Soviet Union fell and the space race slowed, Sridhar pivoted to providing clean energy technology for the rising global middle class. He cofounded Ion America in 2001-renamed Bloom Energy five years later-with a focus on fuel cells that deliver cleaner, on-site, off-grid power.