You might not think much about data centers, but they’re a pervasive part of your life.
Not only do they power much of the tech we constantly use, but there are a lot of them in Nevada. And there may soon be more.
The first data center, built in the 1940s, was called ENIAC. But these huge processing and storage facilities really took off with the advent of cloud computing in the early 2000s.
Today, experts estimate that 5,100 data centers operate in the U.S. Nevada has somewhere between 40 and 50, with about half in and around Las Vegas and the remainder around Reno and Carson City. Through 2030, the number nationwide is expected to grow by almost 25 percent per year.
That’s great for anyone who uses the power of AI chips in cloud computing ... which we all do online, whether we realize it or not.
There is, though, a cost to this convenience.
To operate, data centers require enormous amounts of electricity. Not only to run the massive machines, but to cool them. And they’re cooled with water.
It raises questions for Nevada, still in the grips of a near-30-year drought. How efficiently are data centers with our precious water? Where will all the necessary power come from? More solar fields in the desert? A return to coal-fired energy plants?
In late January, the Reno City Council approved a new data center, but there was opposition. Soon after, the Reno Planning Commission asked the council to approve a resolution pausing the adoption of more data centers. They want to, quote, “take a proactive and thoughtful approach” to understanding the impacts of data centers.
Meanwhile, in Clark County, the county commission last year approved a permit time extension for a 400,000 square-foot data center.
Clark County Commissioner Marilyn Kirkpatrick, District B, said environmental concerns related to data centers are on the commission’s radar.
“We have seen more and more people wanting to have an environmental component of solar for many of those larger warehouse-type buildings, which a data center is one of those. So we haven't really seen that issue come up in Southern Nevada yet, but across the West, other places do it, such as Phoenix. And so we'll be looking at all of that when we start evaluating, and really it's something the Legislature needs to start talking about.”
Olivia Tanager, director of the Toiyabe Chapter of the Sierra Club, spoke against Reno approving a data center. She said the rise of data centers is a big concern for environmental reasons, mostly due to the need to produce more energy to run them.
That, she added, can lead to rate hikes by energy companies, because they’ll need to build more plants to provide more energy.
She also said the state’s tax incentives for data centers, established in 2015 when the economy was flailing, should be abolished by state lawmakers.
“Data centers are coming here with these huge, huge tax abatements and very little jobs,” she said, noting a 75 percent property tax abatement for the centers. “So we want municipalities, you want the state, to consider the economic impact when permitting these data centers in terms of … sustainability, though we would like there to be requirements around energy procurement for data centers and requiring them to use their whole rooftop to generate energy from solar, and perhaps even consider using the rooftops of neighbors to help meet demand in a more sustainable way.”
David Colborne is an IT manager who wrote a column about data centers for the Nevada Independent in January. He said the centers shouldn’t require more government scrutiny than any other large business.
“I just don't think data centers are particularly special,” he said. “They should be managed the way any other industry should be managed, and we should take a look at the resource and power and water requirements and deal with that at the permitting level.”
Like Tanager, he believes the tax abatements might not be necessary anymore.
“When those breaks were first put in, it was in 2015 when the economy in Nevada was recovering, and where we're trying to figure out, how do we get our unemployment rate under 10% we don't have that problem anymore.”
Guests: Marilyn Kirkpatrick, commissioner, Clark County; Olivia Tanager, director, Sierra Club Toiyabe; David Colborne, information technologist and writer
