Comment by AnthonyMouse

> Noise, pollution

Both of these are complaints about gas turbines rather than data centers.

Data centers can pretty easily do the opposite by offering to curtail load during energy supply shortfalls, both through region shifting and by temporarily operating backup generators, which allows the grid to add more renewable generation without having intermittency issues, and thereby operate fewer gas turbines.

Obviously you have to actually do it that way, but that's the point -- the focus of noise and pollution concerns should be directed towards how power is being generated.

> water usage / contamination

Do the math on what percentage of any given region's available water is consumed by data centers. Compare this to e.g. agriculture. This one isn't even a plausible concern, it's manufactured outrage.

> energy costs

Energy costs are supply and demand. The econ 101 explanation is generally pretty accurate for supply -- if there isn't enough supply then prices go up. This is why NIMBYs screw everyone (including themselves). If you can't build more of something then you have to pay more for whatever already exists.

Demand is more complicated. Econ 101 usually applies in the immediate term, higher prices don't increase supply instantaneously so an immediate increase in demand tends to create an immediate increase in price. But then you can increase supply, and what does that do?

You now have higher volume, more economies of scale, more units to amortize fixed costs over. The ultimate effect of an increase in demand is usually a reduction in the unit price. The exceptions are the things where supply is highly inelastic, like land (as opposed to housing units), which is not the case with power generation.

Unless NIMBYs or captured regulators are preventing supply from increasing. In which case you should be focused on fixing that.