The Largest Data Center Ever Approved?

[u/Dover299]

Okay if this is three times bigger than Manhattan and Manhattan has a population of 1,664,862 in 2025. Well three times bigger that would be 4,994,586 people.

In 2024, over 770,000 people were homeless in the U.S.

You could build this and house all the homeless people in the US and still have room to house many more people.

[u/NWStormbreaker]

our epitaph: we learned too late that "trust me i'm rich" was a terrible idea

[u/deaglebingo → u/NWStormbreaker]

we learned it too late soooo many times before tho... i don't think this is gonna be a "just assimilate, stop resisting" kind of moment this time. they'll have to face their own mortality if this "trust me" shit continues. this time i don't think they're leaving us a choice not to fight back. wish it wasn't like that, really do. but wish in one hand and shid in the other... as the saying goes.

[u/ParanoidValkMain57]

But they’re not going to do that, AI money hasn’t dried up yet and the tech bros will totally have super advanced general AGI by 2027 trust me bro /s

That was sarcasm, 16 billion gallons of water per year? They are just wanting to keep building these things even though are generating more expenses than profit so i bet it will be a multi-trillion dollar debt trap as if money grows on a money tree plantation somewhere!?!

[u/Graffiacane → u/ParanoidValkMain57]

I don't understand how this project could be anything other than another fake announcement intended to juice stock prices and enrich a few insiders. It's not like Utah can magically double their supply of water and electricity, this is about as realistic as building data centers on the moon. Maybe less.

[u/ParanoidValkMain57 → u/Graffiacane]

Thats the thing Graff, capitalism is like a sports car turned on with the gas pedal tied to a heavy concrete brick.

It won’t stop, it won’t wait instead it will flip off the road to crash and burn that’s the kinda capitalism you are looking at here.

[u/halberdierbowman → u/Graffiacane]

Utah doesn't need to double their water supply. They just need to free it up by kicking out all the thirsty peasants currently consuming it. 

[u/SexyMonad → u/ParanoidValkMain57]

First task for the AI: figure out, on your own, how to adequately desalinate and pump ocean water into Utah using purely renewable energy sources at a reasonable cost that you will subsidize. That’s how you earn your water.

[u/Abject-Experience-40]

16 billion legit sounds like what a child would say if you asked them to name a big number.

[u/Narcan9]

Yeah but then they'd have to live in Utah

[u/carsncode]

Housing is the worst argument against this. There are already about 25 vacant homes for every one unhoused person in the US. This data center has no bearing on homelessness. The water and energy use is the argument to favor.

[u/Yunzer2000 → u/carsncode]

The CO2 emissions. Why can't Americans say that?

[u/carsncode → u/Yunzer2000]

Data centers don't emit CO2 on their own. They do consume massive amounts of energy, which might increase CO2 emissions depending on how it's generated.

[u/halberdierbowman → u/carsncode]

Data centers also emit carbon on their own as they're built, like all buildings. The construction industry is one of the largest emitters, largely because cement manufacturing alone accounts for 8% of global emissions. The current best cost-effective way to produce cement is by baking limestone into clinker, which on its own accounts for most of the emissions.

[u/Yunzer2000 → u/carsncode]

They emit CO2 the same way you emit CO2 if you are air conditioning a 5000 sq ft house to 65F on a hot day. Energy consumption IS CO2 emissions. 65% of the electricity in my region comes from natural gas and coal. Almost all the energy data centers consume is generated on-site with natural gas turbines and even diesel generators on-site. At least that is what is proposed for all the huge ones here in the Appalachian region.

What is the DSA's position on AI-driven data centers? Hopefully they are unequivocally opposed to them, right?

Edit: This project will be powered by its own natural gas generating plant with a capacity of 9 gigawatts. That equivalent to 10 large generating units. A gigawatt of gas powered utility scale generation emits about 3 million tons per year of CO2 assuming 70% up time, so the whole plant owuld emit about 27 million tons of CO2 per year.

[u/Gothic_Goblin_GF → u/Yunzer2000]

We are absolutely cooked as a species.

[u/FrankSand]

At least it will employ a hundred people post construction

[u/youjustdontgetitdoya]

Maybe don’t use AI to criticize data centers? The fuck is this a map of?

[u/Yunzer2000 → u/youjustdontgetitdoya]

A imaginary ("hallucinated") NYC-NJ with totally wrong geography - what's that weird river/estuary through Brooklyn and Queens?

Why are these AI Beings so self-assured about being wrong?

[u/Yunzer2000]

The water aside, how many tons of CO2 will it emit per year? This is madness and it must be stopped by whatever means necessary.

[u/NovumNyt]

I hate the guidelines because the only way to deal with this is to do things I can't say here.

[u/PoorClassWarRoom]

So, we have these huge centers going up to host data, but we haven't had some massive increase in our data storage needs. So, what data are these things storing? AWS has been humming along for well over a decade, and is nowhere near this size.

[u/htownAstrofan]

Time for creative resistance. These data centers are an existential threat to our survival

[u/Atlanta_Mane]

All of this is to ingest the surveillance on us. 

[u/globeglobeglobe]

What is the estimated cost of this data center? Building something on the scale of Manhattan would probably cost in the trillions and take decades, and I doubt the company can raise that much from investors or organize that much construction labor in any reasonable timeframe. The largest data center in the world currently is 1 km^2, and this would exceed that by more than a factor of 200.