Comment by phil21
4 days ago
Yes, we should definitely increase NIMBY regulation by retroactively changing the rules on industrial development. The US is doing such a great job at building such projects already.
No thanks. Instead lets fix our inability to build a thing in this country by reducing NIMBY regulation so things like power generation can be built where it makes sense, and we are allowed to do things like build long distance transmission lines again. Also start funding these societal-level projects like our grandparents and great grandparents did to invest in our futures.
No datacenter operator wants to deploy their own power plants. It's due to the inability for anyone to get anything done that is not directly under their control. You would be waiting decades for projects to happen otherwise, like many have. Utilities have abdicated their responsibility to build for the future, and regulators have let them. Just like anything infrastructure related in the country. You are now seeing the direct impacts of this, and they will continue to increase regardless of if the cause is AI datacenters or whatever other popular thing we want to argue about next.
It's only "retroactively" changing "the rules" because "the rules" are an instance of regulatory capture limiting the policing of externalities to only ones that have been enumerated. Otherwise the general principle is that if you cause harm to other people, you are responsible for that harm. And industrial noise at all hours of the day is harm.
You'll get zero argument from me about the need to build more power plants and transmission lines. But this of course must be done with proper compensation to those affected, not just a regulatory giveaway after finding some disenfranchised area. In fact one might say that such regulatory giveaways have artificially lowered the expected cost of building a new plant below the actual cost, thus discouraging investment at the true cost.
You can also look at the onerousness of permitting processes (etc) as a result of a regime whereby once something is built, if it causes problems then nobody can do anything about it.
> You can also look at the onerousness of permitting processes (etc) as a result of a regime whereby once something is built, if it causes problems then nobody can do anything about it.
This is an interesting point I have not considered as much as I should have.
I think it's somewhat circular. As regulations become more and more restrictive on a "global" scale, "local" workarounds are going to become more common and more obnoxious to the local population. If a few jet engines in a parking lot impact 10 people in an extremely negative manner, but a 400 mile transmission line impacts 900 property owners through 90 political districts in a very minor way; the latter is going to be getting far more political scrutiny and be far harder to pull off even though it's better overall.
This will then tilt development into screwing the tiny minority since it's far cheaper and faster (practical) to get done. I don't think this is a good outcome for society over the long term as it erodes the social contract, but it's very interesting to think about how to solve.
But doesn't this trend directly tie back to the general point I'm making? Barring once-and-done things like illegal dumping of hazardous waste, "screwing the tiny minority" involves an ongoing process. It's only by the current legal conventions do we allow a one-time mistake in approval to keep on willfully causing harm indefinitely [0]. So when those 10 people inevitably complain in whatever higher jurisdiction might be able to do something about it, they're told too bad it's now a done deal.
Get rid of that regulatory subsidy in your example, and now working with 900 [1] property owners [2] for the predictable well-worn path becomes a more attractive alternative.
[0] Part of the problem is intrinsic to large sunk costs of capital investment, yes. But some is not - the data center still exists and can eventually be used for the purpose it was built for without the turbine generators, but the investors' desired schedule to full operation slips. I'd say this is effectively the same as any other project setback, and comes from something that was deliberately maintained as an unknown.
[1] was this number meant to capture only the people whose real estate is being bought for the right of way, or was it meant to include abutters as well?
[2] I'd say the main problems here stem from the high cost of real estate, especially developed real estate. Of course people get touchy when their single life-asset that they're scraping by to slowly own stands to be drastically devalued. And the higher cost pushes developers to try and avoid compensating everyone who is affected.