DATA CENTER THOUGHTS
The investment community and the utility community and the data center community and data center neighbors are not thinking correctly about how we need to address the opportunity that data centers create. Several points I want to make.
1. Data centers should be required to install their own sustainable energy generation technology behind the meter. Done properly, they do not even need to be hooked up to the grid.
2. SMR nuclear is not a sustainable technology. It may be "clean" but the simple reality is that there is ultimately a limited supply of radioactive material on Earth. Yes, we can reprocess the material to give us a few more years, but at some point we exhaust what mother nature can provide.
3. I view solar and wind and batteries as transitional technologies. We have new sustainable, clean technologies arriving on the scene now. Very deep geothermal, clean waste to energy, waste heat to energy and solar thermal are now entering the marketplace. These technologies properly scaled can easily meet a GW-level need, require a small amount of space, and are silent.
4. Properly designed, the heat that a data center produces can be captured through a closed loop water system. And produces no water over use issue.
5. The "ban the data center movement" is spitting in the face of prosperity. A multi-billion data center subject to property tax will produce a huge amount of revenue for the public sector. When the water issues, the electricity issues, and noise issues are eliminated, a data center in a community will create an incredible revenue stream. Not to mention both the construction jobs and the ongoing jobs the data center brings,
6. The sustainable energy technologies happen to produce energy at a fraction of the cost of fossil fuels and nuclear. Talking about under 10 cents per kWh under a 25 year PPA.
7. The current turbine backlog and other technology choke points will make it very difficult to get data centers on line within any reasonable period of time using currently proposed energy generation technologies.
8. Current governmental and utility company bureaucracies make any front of the meter solution incredibly difficult.
9. Forgot to mention, the sustainable technologies that I am talking about produce energy 24/7/365. Production levels are adjustable. Who needs batteries?
We need to change the way that we look at data centers and the multi-dimensional opportunity that this presents.