Data centers, in and of themselves, are nothing new – there are an estimated 60-75 of them across the state and they’ve been humming along for years. But there’s a recent push to develop data centers on a scale that has not been seen before in Minnesota. At least 13 large-scale data centers have been proposed here, mostly on the outskirts of the Twin Cities metro area.
One such facility is being built by Meta in Rosemount, 30 miles south of Minneapolis, and the others are in various stages of negotiation. As the dependency on cloud computing and Artificial Intelligence grows, so too does the size of facilities considered necessary to make all that happen.
Kyle Rosas is the deputy director for Clean Water Action Minnesota, a national non-profit environmental organization with a strong presence in this state since 1982. He said, “Our organization is not inherently opposed to the technological advancements of the 21st century. What we are opposed to is the creation of exorbitant water and energy demands, and threatening our environment for short-term corporate profits. People need to be informed about the risks these large-scale data centers pose.”
Why Minnesota?
Minnesota is attractive to data center developers for a number of reasons. The natural disaster risk is minimal here, and the northern climate means lower costs for cooling at least part of the year. The Twin Cities metro area has a well-established fiber optic infrastructure, a strong IT workforce and, of course, the state has an abundance of fresh water. Water is crucial to data center operation: for cooling servers through evaporation and for absorbing heat to prevent equipment failure.
Critical water issues
According to Clean Water Action, if all of the proposed data centers were constructed, their daily water consumption would equal that of over one million Minnesotans. Data centers take in clean drinkable water and discharge contaminated water to taxpayer-funded municipal treatment facilities and/or evaporation ponds.
Discharge water can contain toxic chemicals and PFAS not removed by municipal facilities. PFAS refers to a large group of human-made chemicals known for resisting heat, oil, stains, and water. They’re called “forever chemicals” because they don’t break down in the environment or in the human body.
Ground-water depletion resulting from large-scale data center operations would certainly strain aquifers and private wells in southeastern Minnesota, as well.
Critical energy issues
Maintaining a data center’s equipment requires huge amounts of electricity – and the higher the networking capacity of a data center, the larger its power draw. Equipment such as processors, chips, and storage devices consume about half of a data center’s energy, with the rest going toward systems cooling.
According to Clean Water Action, if all of the large-scale data centers proposed in Minnesota were built, their daily energy demand would equal that of all 2.3 million homes in the state. Data centers generate steady noise and are lit 24 hours a day, decreasing livability for nearby neighbors.
Nondisclosure agreements
There are ongoing debates about the level of transparency regarding these projects and their long-term community benefits versus the environmental costs.
Rosas explained, “Minnesota is prepared to give away $480 million in sales tax exemptions over the next four years to corporate investors in the big tech sector. What complicates negotiations even further if the use of NDAs as part of negotiating these large-scale data center contracts.” Non-disclosure agreements are legally binding contracts that create a confidential relationship by preventing parties from sharing proprietary information with unauthorized third parties.
In other words, residents often don’t know if one of these facilities is being proposed for the town they live in. Residents may see notice of a city council or other public meeting using language like “technology park” or “industrial park,” because the developer has filed a non-disclosure agreement between themselves and the municipality they want to build in. Developers are not legally required to identify their projects as data centers if they have filed an NDA.
Clean Water Action Minnesota
Clean Water Action is introducing a full moratorium on building large-scale data centers in Minnesota, similar to the nuclear power plant building moratorium that has been on the books in Minnesota since 1994.
Rosas explained, “If that bill doesn’t succeed, the Data Center Coalition we’re part of is advancing another bill to regulate the amount of water and energy that data centers can use. We’re exploring an idea put forth by Minnesota Interfaith Power & Light call ‘BYONCE’, which stands for Bring Your Own New Clean Energy, in the event that a hyper-scale data center is constructed. This bill could require solar panels and heat pumps to be built into every building, offsetting the energy used by the data center. If we have to have data centers in Minnesota, we need to reverse the current order of operations to ensure more transparency.”
On Wednesday, Feb. 18 at 10 a.m. there will be a rally at the State Capitol to support enacting rigorous, robust regulations on large-scale date center facilities – especially pertaining to water and energy demands. This is a Data Center Coalition led-event, and will feature voices of member organizations including Clean Water Action, Minnesota Interfaith Power & Light, Clean Up the River Environment (CURE), Sierra Club North Star Chapter, Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, Mukwa, Rise & Repair, Coalition for Responsible Data Center Development, and Vote Solar.
You can visit Clean Water Action Minnesota’s website at www.cleanwater.org/mn to send a Call to Action message to your legislator on this subject.
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