Data Centers

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The country hasn't seen this kind of environmental, technological, economical,
and political tug of war. Maybe ever, what's causing it?
Two little letters A and I. Just this year, American
investors have committed two trillion dollars in support of artificial
intelligence research implementation, but mostly build out two trillion bricks

(00:25):
and mortar buildings. We know them as data centers. And
few places have enjoyed this little boom better than eastern Nebraska.
From Where did this come? Within two months of its launch,
chat GPT hit one hundred million users. Today it has
over eight hundred million. The tech and semiconductor monster in Nvidia,

(00:47):
based in Santa Clara, California, is now the world's largest company.
AI is no longer something to look for. It's here.
Its backbone is a network of large block buildings using
rows and rows of computer terminals. Billions and billions and
bits of data from high school reunion photos posted on

(01:09):
Facebook to some of the most sensitive military secrets in
the US government flow through every one of them every
minute of every day. Currently, they are about five around here,
counting the Center and Council Bluffs. Google has four. Meta
has won, but greater Nebraska communities from North Platt to
Atoms are getting visits with sites on their sites. When Meta, Yahoo, Google,

(01:34):
Amazon decides to put one near you, is it a
good thing or a bad thing? A little bit of both.
Data centers bring lots of money at first. In twenty
twenty five alone, sixty one billion dollars were spent building them.
Economist figure high tech spending accounted for eighty percent of
the GDP increase in just the first half of twenty

(01:57):
twenty five. They pay sales and real property taxes. Local
and state tax revenue from data centers in Texas this
year alone will top three billion dollars. That's a lot
of schools, roads, parks, and other services we all use.
Twenty states offer incentives to get the builds. What about jobs,

(02:19):
Yes and no. Data centers produce very few permanent jobs,
sometimes as few as twenty, but work for the HVAC text,
the engineers, the electricians, the plumbers, the broadband, the carpenters, masons.
That's all very large and can sustain those small companies
for a whole year. Data centers also spark infrastructure improvements,

(02:42):
new substations, fiber optic transmission lines, even power grids. Magically
improve When a data center goes up. That's great, rosie.
So what's not to like? Well, they use two big things,
water and power. A new AI data center uses the
same energy as one hundred thousand homes. It stresses the

(03:05):
system a lot, which means the demand drives up consumer rates,
forcing power companies to spend massively to keep up. Moving forward,
got a mandate provide your own juice. That means nuclear
and a good thing. The data centers also use enormous
amounts of water. Google's Nebraska data centers alone use seven

(03:27):
hundred and thirty one million gallons of water. Last year,
their massive Council Bluffs facility alone used one point three
billion gallons. The water is processed through the data center's
cooling system to keep the computer terminals from overheating. This
worries agg producers greatly, and should Much of this date

(03:48):
is already parted from prolonged drought. Those farmers and ranchers
need the aquifer groundwater during growing season. Eastern Nebraska uses
the Platta Missouri River basins. NRDA officials are skeptical. Yes,
water recycling technology is improving with each new build and
is often mandated as part of the permitting protocol, but

(04:09):
they still need a lot of it. Desalination plants are
a long term fix, but only if your data center
is close to the ocean and they aren't libraries. These
data centers take up hundreds of acres of land. The
massive cooling systems make a lot of noise as the
regular testing, as does the regular testing of hundreds of

(04:31):
these diesel powered backup generators, each the size of a railcar.
It's like living next to a heavy metal concert twenty
four hours a day. But on balance they are good
to have. Under the following provisos, the trillion dollar companies
that build operate known the must commit to sharing all
infrastructure improvement costs. Need new roads, sewers, substations. They got

(04:55):
to pay for half since they don't produce jobs. Got
to make annual seven figures contributions into community foundations for
public projects like parks, pools, and soccer fields. Commit to
advanced water recycling methods with each new build. If they're good,
we should be good.