Data Center Building Boom Cycle???

[Buffalo Bill]

I only became aware of this as an issue last summer, as people started protesting the local construction of data centers.
More I look into it, the more threatening it sounds.
Energy consumption, environment degradation, even social impacts from their purpose.
Reminiscent of the industrial boom of the 20th century.
There are many many reports about it, I'll just post this one video.

[dorkburger]

Interesting story. I've been working in small to mid size data centers for 25 plus years. Even the old-school non AI ones I'm in have pretty intense infrastructure. Backups for backups, etc. Being that they use energy in such a large scale, they tend to try to be efficient for cost savings which they might window dress as environmentally conscious. . The water concerns are Interesting to me. The water cooled spots I've been in have closed loop systems. The videos shown did show a huge bank of cooling towers. They also recirculate water but some is lost to evaporative cooling- maybe a lot.

Overall the sites tend to be pretty clean and other then security and site protocol are pretty nice to work at.

The story is spot on about jobs. Once these places are in operation the in house crew is pretty small.

I often play a game called spot the data center. They typically look like a large warehouse, but have security fences and gates, only a handful of cars in the parking lot, and almost never have a business name on the building nor any signage other then an address. There's more around then one may realize.