One of the U.S. hotspots for data center construction, Georgia, has recently seen growing community opposition to huge data centers as residents fear their utility bills will soar and their rural landscape will be ruined.
While Georgia’s residents acknowledge the need for the U.S. to lead in AI technology and development, most don’t want gigantic “monstrosities” in their backyard, people from Coweta County tell the Financial Times, as some of them have organized in community groups to advocate against data center construction.
In Coweta County, there is growing opposition against a $17-billion plan for a data center, Project Sail, proposed by Prologis, one of the world’s biggest warehouse owners.
Prologis plans to build a 600 megawatt (MW) hyperscale data center in northwest Coweta County.
The Citizens for Rural Coweta group opposes the project in their Stop Project Sail campaign, arguing that when completed, the project will be one of the biggest data centers in the country in an area currently zoned Rural Conservation.
“Project Sail is a heavy industrial project. If it moves forward, the rezoning will set a precedent for all of Coweta, putting any Rural areas at risk of development,” the opponents of the project say.
They are also concerned that the power the data center will consume will necessitate major grid upgrades, the cost of which “may ultimately be passed along to the taxpayers of Coweta County, as has happened to others across the country.” Water supply is also a concern.
Prologis has engaged in meetings with the local governments, the company told FT.
Georgia, Indiana, and Ohio have emerged as key states that hyperscalers explore for building data centers.
Yet, electric utilities face a high degree of uncertainty over future revenues as the boom of AI data centers generates widely varying forecasts of peak demand in many areas across the country.
If utilities overestimate their future demand, they risk overbuilding new capacity that will not be met by consumption. A possible overbuild would come at the expense of the American ratepayers, who have already seen electricity prices rising at a faster pace than U.S. inflation over the past three years.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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