The fight against data centers is really a fight against AI and big tech.

The majority of data centers don’t train AI or perform AI transactions. They mostly host mundane transactions, websites, and databases.

However, AI is working its way into every piece of software and every system. It is powerful. It is here now. It is getting better everyday. It is not going away. And, AI workloads require far more computational power, and electricity, than traditional cloud computing.

In the US we WILL be building new data centers focusing on AI.

AI will be a part of virtually everything and will transform our society. There will be jobs lost. There will be new jobs added. While AI is something to be understood, regulated, and managed, we should not live in fear of it.

Data centers are not the enemy; they are a proxy for the greater war against AI and big tech, playing out across America.

This bold new world may feel uncomfortable, but to be successful in the future, we have to be willing to embrace, and shape, change.

Which brings us back to data centers. Locally, do we embrace them, tolerate them, or outright reject them?

Resources

🔵  The more young people use AI, the more they hate it

🔵  Timely Topic: An Expert’s Take on Why We Should Not Fear AI

🔵  What We Fear When We Fear Artificial Intelligence

In a nutshell: Data center diesel backup generators emit pollutants, but their use is minimal, and existing regulations and standards largely curb adverse impacts.

• Large data centers may rely on a volume of diesel generators for backup power.

• These generators emit several harmful air pollutants, such as nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, and particulate matter.

• Regulated by KDHE, using national standards which limit use and allowable emissions to protect air quality.

• Backup generators rarely run for prolonged periods.

• Routine operation & maintenance (10-30 minutes total per month).

• Few actual power outages (operators reported 0 to 2 outages at their facilities in last two years, lasting from 1 to 5 hours, in Virginia).

While a “worst-case” prolonged, large-scale regional outage could contribute to temporary air quality issues, such outages are rare, and air quality would return to normal after the event.

In Hutchinson, we actually have an annual event with large numbers of diesel generators (many are old and conform to NO current emission standards) that goes on for 10 days. We call it the Kansas State Fair.

Possible regulations

1. Require all diesel generators meet emissions standards at least as protective as EPA Tier 4 standards (as codified in 40 CFR Part 1039).

2. Require natural gas generators, in place of diesel generators, and require that they meet emissions standards at least as protective as EPA Tier 2 for non-road large spark ignition engines.

3. Require long duration battery storage on-site, in place of generators. While a new and evolving concept, it is feasible for some installations. Most data centers already have 15 minutes (minimum) of battery storage in place, so this would be a continuation of their current strategy. Again, not common and possibly not feasible for many, but a thought for discussion.

4. Require renewable energy standards for the data center. A vast majority of the air pollution will come from the power plant generating the electricity. Requiring renewable energy for a portion of the power would lower emmissions, at the source.

Resources

🔵  Localized Air Pollution Impacts from Data Centers in Virginia

🔵  Joint Legislative Audit & Review Commission State of Virginia Data Center 2024 Study

🔵  What do you Know about Tier 4 Regulations?

🔵  Navigating Diesel Generator Regulations in 2026

🔵  Diesel vs. Natural Gas Generators for Data Centers

Absolutely true, and the number one reason to resist building a Data Center.

Ours is a very old, carbon-based world. The history of our planet is the history of carbon. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. Period. It absorbs radiant heat energy from the earth as it travels straight out into space, then re-radiates it in all directions including sending some of it back to our planet.

Basically you can think of CO2 as altering the path of earth's radiant heat energy, just a bit, and slightly reducing our ability to get rid of heat.

Our climate is in a delicate balance, through many different systems and processes. All it takes is a worldwide nudge to kick in many other amplification processes. The butterfly effect, if you will.

However, data centers will be built, whether it is here or elsewhere. Consumer demand will help lead the charge, and national security and competitive pressures will seal the deal. Data centers will be built.

So, can data centers be built without such a heavy carbon footprint? Yes.

Renewable energy mandates can drastically reduce the footprint, as can highly efficient cooling systems, better software and hardware efficiencies, and attention to all process within the center. Renewable energy also lessens water usage, as fossil fuel power plants can consume large amounts of water to produce power. In Europe, several cities even use the wast heat from data centers to heat the urban business and residential cores of their cities.

Carbon footprint has to be thought of as a design priority, in order to make a meaningful impact during the planning, construction, and ultimately maintenance phases in the data center lifecycle.

Resources

🔵  Quantifying Data Center Carbon Footprint 2024

🔵  Carbon and water footprints of data centers & what this could mean for AI

🔵  Two Wildly Different Data Centers on How to Meet Electricity Demand

🔵  Green Data Center Market Size, Share & Industry Analysis

Many feel data centers should be located in industrial zones within cities, as the further you can keep data centers from residential areas, the better. Required power, water, and Internet resources are all concentrated in urban areas, not rural areas.

However, the data isn't so clear on residential property values being affected negatively by nearby data centers.

Data centers generally do not decrease home values and, in some cases, may increase them. Studies show that homes near data centers often sell for more due to surrounding infrastructure improvements, increased demand from high earning data center employees and vendors, and a stronger tax base. While they bring industrial-like noise, they are low-traffic and often viewed as stable neighbors compared to other developments.

Resources

🔵  Study: Home Prices Are Higher When the House Is Near a Data Center

🔵  What impact does data centers have on housing?

🔵  Will Living Near a Data Center Decrease Your Property Value? Real Estate Experts

🔵  Study: Data Centers & 2023 Home Sales in Northern Virginia

An AI bubble bursting does not mean AI will go away, it just means the value of AI might currently be too high.

AI will still be around and there will still be the requirement for AI processing power, but the amount of investment into new AI Data centers will most likely be greatly reduced in a bubble burst.

When the housing market imploded in 2008-2009, and we had the Great Recession, housing in Kansas ultimately lost 10-15% of its value, temporarily. Prices did not "crash". Although many investors who were living on the edge went bankrupt, the houses still had substantial value.

In the event of a crash, companies like Microsoft and Meta have enough cash on hand to finish the projects they started, and still utilize them. They would also most likely slow down the construction of ongoing projects and cancel some future AI Data centers.

Or they can pivot from AI Data centers to traditional ones. Infrastructure like buildings, the power grid, and cooling systems can be carried over, while the actual servers are exchanged for non AI focused ones.

It is also highly unlikely that a company would abandon an extremely valuable property due to a sales tax exemption expiring in 20 years.

Regarding abandonment, a Reno County Commissioner has suggested that we:

"Charge a bond for demolition or renovation for later other use in the amount necessary for demolishing and clean up of property to natural state when property is not being used for AI."

A question; what other businesses do we require upfront bonds to demolish their buildings when they aren't being used for the initial intended purpose? Any? This seems extremely excessive to this author.

However, perhaps a bond might be a requirement for cleanup of e-waste, if it should ever come to that? Data centers will continually replace, upgrade, and repurpose their electronics. The building, land, and utility infrastructure will still be valuable, but old electronic equipment quickly becomes worthless, so a conversation about a small bond to address this issue might be appropriate.

Resources

🔵  The Hidden Cost of Data Center Growth -Millions of Tons of E-Waste

🔵  Data Centers: A New Frontier in Obsolescence

🔵  Sustainable Approaches to Data Center Decommissioning

Larger data centers can use a lot of power. This may require additional power generation facilities, transmission enhancements, switching equipment, etc.

In the past all of these costs might have been spread across all customers/ratepayers, driving up electric bills for residential customers.

In November of 2025, the Kansas Corporation Commission approved a new tarrif plan for Large Load Power Users, which effectively places the burden for additional infrastructure squarely on the customer whose large load required it in the first place.

Evergy is on record saying that Large Load Power Users will pay for and add additional infrastructure that will benefit all customers with additional grid stability and capabilities.

This is a major step forward in protecting residential customers in Kansas, and governmental entities can take comfort in knowing data centers will not impact their citizens power bills.

Q. Is electricity being sold to the data center at a wholesale or retail rate?

A. Evergy is selling electricity to data centers at retail rates under a specially structured tariff, not at wholesale rates.

Here's the full picture:

The Utility Mandate in SB98: Qualifying data centers must commit to purchasing electricity for 10 years from the certified public utility in the territory where the data center is located. That effectively means Evergy in most of eastern Kansas. A key piece of the legislation is a prohibition forbidding data center owners from constructing their own electric power plants. So they can't self-generate and must buy from Evergy.

What Kind of Rate — Wholesale or Retail?

It's retail, but under a special new tariff called the Large Load Power Service (LLPS) plan. Demand and energy rates in the LLPS plan are designed to cover Evergy's incremental cost to serve large load customers, so existing customers are not subsidizing those users. Any system upgrades necessary solely to serve new customers will be directly assigned to those customers.

The Kansas Corporation Commission (KCC) — a state regulator — approved this tariff, which is the hallmark of a retail rate structure. The new tariff provides large-load facilities with lower energy rates and other incentives in exchange for bearing a portion of the grid costs required to support the increasing data center load. Large load users requiring 75 MW or more will have to sign an energy contract for between 12 and 17 years with high early termination fees, and in exchange will receive long-term, stable rates at a competitive price.

No Rate Discounts Allowed:

Data centers are not allowed to take advantage of the state law that allows large economic development projects to discount electricity rates by 40% for the first five years and 20% for the following five years. The legislature specifically closed that door.

Bottom line: Evergy is the exclusive provider, but the electricity is sold at a regulated retail rate — a specialized large-load retail tariff overseen by the KCC — not at wholesale. The structure was explicitly designed so that data centers pay their full share rather than being subsidized by residential and small business ratepayers.

Resources

🔵  New Kansas rules set guidelines for data centers to protect smaller customers

🔵  Kansas Corporation Commission: Large Load Power Service Rate Plan

🔵  Data Center Myth Busting Reference Guide -Kansas Commerce -Myth #2

This particlular accusation came from a Bloomberg article. The authors of the article (AI needs so much power, it’s making yours worse) compared THD (Total Harmonic Distortion) readings from 770,000 residential Whisker Labs’ sensors in the US, against a database of data center locations and sizes.

Locations with many large data centers were more likely to experience excessive THD in residential grid power. This is known as correlation, not causation. Thus, per the above image, ice cream does not cause sunburn, even though higher ice cream consumption correlates with increased sunburn.

Is it possible for data centers to create harmonics that impact upstream loads? Yes.

Is it something that happens in bulk? Not likely, as utilities monitor for this and penalize data centers if they detect it, so the centers have equipment that prevents it. If the data center generates too many harmonics, the utility will add filters at the substation to remove them and then charge the operator for that infrastructure charge.

Harmonics are worse for the data center than they are for residential consumers. It is kind of odd to allege that "rogue harmonics are bad enough to effect the basic electronics in a persons home, but the incredibly sensitive state of the art equipment in the data center would be just fine with it, so the owners just let it loose on the world".

Also, even IF data centers reflected dangerous harmonics back to the grid, it’s got to go through another transformer before it gets to a persons house, where those harmonics are absorbed and turned into heat. Harmonics are a bigger danger to the utilities transmission and distribution gear then they are to a home.

And finally, if grid upgrades are needed for a data center to operate, then the data center will pay for the upgrades and the entire grid will become more resilient and capable as a result of the investment.

Resources

🔵  AI needs so much power, it’s making yours worse

🔵  Ting: Analysis of Total Harmonic Distortion on the U.S. Electric Grid

🔵  Are data centers to blame for power quality issues?

To paraphrase my late father's advice, “So, if Harvey County jumps off a cliff, should Reno County jump off too?”  

Our local anti-everything activists are intertwined with larger nationwide activists, primarily operating in closed Facebook Groups. They are loud and surrounding counties have buckled to the pressure.

Why do we believe that other counties know something that we don’t? Do we think they're smarter than we are?

Our Hutchinson, South Hutchinson, and Reno County Planning Commissions are capable of making their own decisions and regulations, based on facts, when it comes to data centers.

We are not other Counties. We are Reno County. We should do what is right and fair for ALL our citizens and businesses, based on verifiable facts and common sense.

The heat output is directly proportional to the energy input. A 20 Mw Data Center will put out a little less than that in electrical resistance heating equivalent. Picture a 20 Mw blow dryer.

So that's really bad, right? As usual it is much more complicated than that.Every single thing humans do that involves energy puts off heat. Driving your car. Building a boiler. Refrigerating a warehouse. Harvesting a crop. These all produce waste heat.

We also alter the albedo (reflectivity) of the land around us in many ways, usual increasing heat absorption. A blacktop road captures an immense amount of heat from the sun. Dark roofs do the same. That's why cities are usual around 5 degrees warmer than the country. Even planting a dark green soybean or corn field, over a wheat field affects albedo, humidity, and water consumption.

We live in the information age. Almost everything you do is supported by a Data Center. Every YouTube video and Google search will result in waste heat.

HOWEVER, the recent paper (linked below) that has people panicking titled "The data heat island effect: quantifying the impact of AI datacenters in a warming world" is fundamentally flawed. In the resources below is a great article by Andy Masley on why and how it is flawed.

Should we be concerned about the waste heat released from data centers? Well, it's actually pretty minimal in the grand scheme of things. But it would be nice if humans took the heat effects of what they build into more consideration. For instance, mandating lighter covered roofs on houses could have a major effect nationwide.

Possible solutions to reduce heat from data centers are to work on more efficent coding and more efficient processors. Another avenue would be to capture the waste heat and use it to heat homes and businesses in the winter. Yet another avenue would be requiring a certain part of the power to come from renewables, as fossil fuel power generation itself causes massive waste heat, and far more importantly, CO2 emissions that contribute to Climate Change.

Resources

🔵  Let's not compare data center heat exhaust to nuclear bombs

🔵  Data center heat is not raising the land temperature where they're built

🔵  Data center heat island effect-quantifying the impact -Suspect paper

Data Center critics use helium as another reason to ban them. Why? The post above shows one example. As usual, there is a small kernal of truth blown to large proportions, and weaponized.

Helium is used in the manufacturing process for semiconductors. It can also be used to fill the small empty cavity in hard drives to allow the discs to spin more freely.

Helium is also used in welding, breathing mixtures for divers, to pressurize rocket fuel tanks, and on and on. It is a limited resource and supply will have to be addressed at some point in the future. However, singling out a single small usage industry is a propaganda strategy, not a serious conversation about resources.

Resources

🔵 Explained: Helium Hard Drives

🔵 Helium Drives Cloud Storage

🔵 Why Helium is Essential to Semiconductors

🔵 Helium Market -Usage

What do they pay in taxes? What kind of economic impact will they really make here?

First, a fact. 100% of NOTHING is still NOTHING. Incentives don't lose money if the business wouldn't have come to your area without them. AND, there are a huge number of tax exemptions for all kinds of businesses in Kansas. Basic agriculture incentives are even baked into the Kansas Constitution. Incentives are part of the fabric of America, and almost everyone, and every business, receives incentives from the government in one form or another.

For data centers, Kansas SB98 was passed in 2005 and gives data centers who invest 250 million dollars or more, and conform to a number of stringent requirements, a sales tax exemption on most everything (except power generation equipment) for 20 years. This is a very powerful tax break, but it requires that the data center purchase power from an outside power provider, which is incredibly important as that translates to large power franchise fees being paid out to local governments from the power provider.

Data centers pay a variety of taxes & other income, including:

• Real Property Tax 

• Corporate Income Tax

• Sales Tax

• Tangible Personal Property Tax

• Indirectly:

  • • Electric Power Franchise Fee

    • Payroll Taxes on Employees

• Negotiated:

  • • PILOT (Payment in Lieu of Taxes)

    • Community incentive package

Data center economic impact:

• Initial:

  • Constructions jobs/community hosting outside workers

  • Local suppliers & subcontractors

  • Infrastructure upgrades (roads, electrical grid, fiber data connections, etc.)

• Ongoing:

  • Taxes & other negotiated income

  • Community incentive package

  • Employees (well paid, but generally 20-100 people)

  • Outside contractors

Community incentive packages:

Data center operators also provide significant benefits through incentive packages negotiated with municipalities that can include funding for schools or public infrastructure projects.

In multiple cases, hyper-scalers have funded renewable energy plants and created workforce development programs in areas where they operate.

As part of the AWS $10 billion data center campus investment in Mississippi, the company developed STEM-focused workforce training and career awareness programs for K-12 school systems and funded the state’s first utility-scale wind farm.

Resources

🔵  Brookings: Turning the data center boom into long-term, local prosperity

🔵  Hutch Chamber List of Incentives

🔵  State of Kansas: Sales Tax Exemptions

🔵  State of Kansas: Property Tax Abatements

🔵  Kansas Commerce: Business Incentives & Services

Data centers produce noise

• • 1. Internally from computer fans, UPS battery systems, HVAC & rack cooling.

    2. Internally when generators are in use, with external exhaust noise as well.

    3. Externally from cooling units.

    4. Internally and externally from inverters, transformers, and switching equipment.

• Most existing data centers are very quiet and you might not even know they're there.

• Some data centers are somewhat noisy and bother residential neighbors.

• Noise is a physical design issue that can be addressed through proper engineering. Data centers are not inherently noisy.

• Regulators can specify noise limits and can require regular 3rd party testing.

• Ideally data centers should not be built next to residential neighbors; they should be located in industrial zones, away from residential.

Amazingly we already allow large commercial building, containing chillers and other cooling equipment, with semi-trucks idling for long periods of time behind the warehouse area, right next door to residential houses. They are called grocery stores.

Infrasound

• Sound below 20hz that is inaudible to most people.

• Infrasound is produced by a wide variety of mechanical and natural systems, including traffic.

• If you were to believe the anti-everything people on Facebook, infrasound is only a problem with Wind Farms and Data Centers.

• Extremely loud (over 140 db) infrasound can hurt people.

• Data centers produce infrasound that is very low in volume.

• Data centers are NOT problematic for humans, with regards to infrasound.

Resources

🔵  Infrasound -Wikipedia Article

🔵  Communities Are Raising Noise Pollution Concerns About Data Centers

🔵  Infrasound issues are fake

We have elected leaders and planning and zoning folks whose job it is to make sure our County isn't overwhelmed by any one entity.

AND, the land does not belong to the anti-everything people. It is the landowners' land and the landowners' decision. If the anti-everything people don't want data centers on their land, then don't sell or lease it for that purpose.

It is amazing how some people seem to think that other people's land is theirs, and they should control it. Property rights matter. 

Data centers are the absolute most optimized use of land physically possible. There are no other large buildings that are crammed as full as possible with objects that have been optimized down to the literal atom to deliver the absolute most performance possible. The most advanced and complex supply chains in the world are all working together to make the servers inside data centers as close to the physical limits of manufacturing as anything humans currently produce.

Northern Virginia has 13% of all global data center capacity, and there Loudoun County has by far the largest concentration. But data centers only take up 3% of Loudoun’s land, and they generate 38% of all county general fund revenue.

America isn’t lacking in land. It is estimated that by 2030, all data centers in America will occupy about 1,400 square miles. This is about 0.3% as much as America’s prime farmland. The vast majority of this will be land around the data center, the buildings themselves will collectively take up about 25 square miles, 0.005% of America’s prime farmland.

Resources

🔵  Data center land use issues are fake

🔵  Data Drain: The Land and Water Impacts of the AI Boom

In a closed loop data center, which is what would probably be allowed in water scarce Kansas, waste water will be minimal and consist of: 

• Reverse Osmosis (RO) rejected water: If a data center treats its incoming water to improve quality, the RO process produces a reject stream containing the removed impurities. 

• System Flushing and Refills: Closed-loop systems require occasional flushing and refilling to maintain equipment integrity and heat transfer efficiency.

• Facility Processes: General facility operations, such as staff restrooms or cleaning, can contribute minor amounts of wastewater.

Real-time monitoring of water flows and quality is now feasible and becoming part of data center best practices – for example, installing sensors to continuously check for any leak, abnormal usage spike, or water chemistry issue. 

Such proactive monitoring gives an extra layer of protection to the community’s water. It’s essentially applying the same diligence to water as data centers already do to energy and uptime monitoring.

Data centers may use biocides (to prevent bacterial growth), corrosion inhibitors (such as phosphates), and other chemicals in their cooling loops. If not properly treated during system flushing, these can be discharged into the municipal sewer system.

Some data centers are going a step further and implementing on-site wastewater treatment or recycling. This is yet another area that regulations could address.

For instance, Google’s Georgia data center not only uses reclaimed water for cooling but also treats its own wastewater on-site to a level that it doesn’t need to send it to the municipal sewer at all. By treating and then reusing or safely releasing water themselves, data centers can greatly reduce the burden on public infrastructure. This kind of innovation may become standard in water-stressed regions: the data center of the future might have a built-in water recycling plant, ensuring almost no drop of water leaves it without being cleaned and reused.

Resources

🔵  Florida Water & Pollution Control: Myths vs. Reality: Data Centers And Water Usage

🔵  Closed-Loop Cooling: Water Saver or Chemical Time Bomb?

Here's the problem.

First of all is the demand for the computing that data centers perform. In fact, with every Facebook post you make against data centers, you are driving demand. From banking, to social media, to your favorite streaming movie, you are driving demand. So is everyone else.

Secondly, there is money. Investors are clamoring to invest in tech, because that's where good returns are to be made. Tech is flush with cash.

And finally, tech folks are smart. Very smart. Not evil; but smart. They know the world is demanding more computing and they will find a way to deliver it.

Enter the tech company Span.

They are currently experimenting with putting mini data centers in peoples' back yards. Instead of a building full of computers (data center) they will place a mini data center in a resident's back yard, connected via high speed fiber, to their neighbor's mini data center in their backyard.

You see, there's plenty of electrical capacity in most people's breaker box. All Span has to do is dangle free (or greatly reduced) electricity and Internet to the homeowner, and they're in. Think about it. You're offered free electricity and Internet to host a box in the backyard that you can't let anyone touch, and never have to worry about. Does it make noise? Sure, a little, but you can live with that. Anyway, it isn't any louder than your AC.

So, Span gets 10 of these going in a city. Then 100, then 1,000, then 10,000. What do they have now? A full blown distributed data center, with no way for the government to control anything about it.  Who is going to tell a resident that they can't plug something into their own home power socket?

The Span distributed data center isn't as efficient as a single building data center would be, and Span has to worry about the maintenance of all these individual boxes in backyards, but because of YOUR efforts to ban data centers they couldn't build a data center where they needed one, so they just built around the ban.

The city/county has now lost control, and tax/PILOT money, but they will still get their power franchise fee (5% where I live) from the electric company for the power used by the backyard data centers.

BUT, heres where it gets ugly for YOU. You see, if the data center was a single big building, in Kansas, it would have to pay for all the transmission and power station upgrades needed for the big power load it draws. But since it is distributed to homeowners, ALL the customers will need to pay for ALL the upgrades, as the breaker box in the home can handle the load, but not the current transmission lines and power generation facilities.

Again, every customer will foot the bill for the needed power upgrades... except the homeowners who signed up to get the free electricity and Internet for hosting the mini data center.

They will be just fine.

Resources

🔵  Major Homebuilder To Test Placing Mini Data Centers in Suburban Backyards

🔵  SPAN Announces a Distributed Data Center Solution

🔵  Span and Nvidia to develop AI data centers in your backyard