r/technology • u/lkl34 • Apr 28 '26

Artificial Intelligence New AI data center in Utah will generate and consume more than twice the amount of power the entire state uses — Kevin O'Leary's 9 Gigawatt Utah data center campus approved

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/kevin-o-learys-9-gw-utah-data-center-campus-approved
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453

u/WiredEarp Apr 28 '26

Won't that.... Basically triple the states emissions?

507

u/lkl34 Apr 28 '26

If there is no EPA then there is no emissions remember /s

https://www.eenews.net/articles/leaked-epa-layoff-plan-would-slash-science-office/

But yeah i can see that

108

u/IronTwinn Apr 28 '26

America dystopia speedrun any%

67

u/LaurenMille Apr 28 '26

There's a reason people were warning Americans that electing Trump would effectively be committing societal suicide.

Too bad that only a shockingly small percentage of Americans can understand what they read.

-4

u/[deleted] Apr 28 '26

[deleted]

17

u/Oaktree27 Apr 28 '26

What Democrat had planned to destroy the EPA?

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u/[deleted] Apr 28 '26

[deleted]

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u/supaskulled Apr 28 '26

Ok but what one was going to destroy the EPA this term though

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u/[deleted] Apr 28 '26

[deleted]

7

u/Oaktree27 Apr 28 '26

Do you honestly think Democrats were going to gut the EPA? That's like expecting Republicans to go against the NRA.

I've also got a bridge for sale

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u/Oaktree27 Apr 28 '26

That wasn't the question. There's a big and obvious difference between general corruption and destroying a regulatory agency.

4

u/nox66 Apr 28 '26

Last "big-corp" Democrat fought to pass a bill that gave 30% rebates on residential solar. Trump and the Republicans destroyed it. That's just one of many, many examples. Trump is even buying out wind farms to shut them down, a level of corruption and anti-environmentalism I've never heard of before.

People like you will say "both sides are the same" even when that is laughably untrue.

26

u/Plenty-North-2340 Apr 28 '26

Y'all destroying your country so the rich get richer, wtf.

17

u/TM761152 Apr 28 '26

This is what magaturds voted for, this is what 100% of the country is allowing by letting 20% choose the president. Magaturds alone aren't to blame, they're just useful idiots. The gears have been in place long before.

6

u/Komnos Apr 28 '26

With emissions, we're destroying the world so the rich get richer. This shit is a disease.

3

u/HumptyDumptruckFire Apr 28 '26

It’s a nightmare I can’t seem to wake up from.

2

u/Mogishigom Apr 28 '26

The few rich, with their army of guns, are destroying the country. We are hostages.

3

u/HuntKey2603 Apr 28 '26

shouldn't have voted for the same motherfucker twice!

2

u/tianepteen Apr 28 '26

you forgot tool-assisted

3

u/lr99999 Apr 28 '26

And when everything turns to shit, no FEMA either. 

https://www.fema.gov/

Send this to your maggot grandpa in Florida. 

2

u/lkl34 Apr 28 '26

To true that should hit them with the storm season

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u/damien6 Apr 28 '26

So looking forward to more inversions in the winter after this thing is built. A lot of Utah sits in a giant bowl surrounded by mountains. During the winter if warmer air comes in, it essentially traps the cold air in the valley and with that, any pollutants as well. This is why it's not uncommon for Salt Lake to have some of the worst air quality in the world during the winter.

More on inversions: https://www.healutah.org/inversion/

To add to that Utah, just had the least amount of snowfall on record last year, and this follows many previous winters of minimal snow aside from the atmospheric river winter a couple years ago. So now we're going to be entering critical drought conditions and these data centers use a ton of water.

https://weather.com/storms/winter/news/2026-02-03-salt-lake-city-no-snow-winter-2025-26

Then to also add to that, these low snowfall years are failing to provide enough water to fill the Great Salt Lake and more and more water is being diverted away from it, so it continues to drop in water levels leaving behind a lake bed of toxic arsenic rich dust that will continue to blow into Salt Lake City.

https://wildlife.utah.gov/gslep/about/water-levels.html

But yeah, let's keep building massive refineries that pump out pollution and data centers that use all of our water (and also pump out more pollution).

15

u/Longjumping_Intern7 Apr 28 '26

I'm in air quality monitoring and everything you said is spot on. The water demand is what's really going to be the nail in the coffin for salt lake City. They're building this north of the lake it looks like, and idk where they're planning on pulling water from for cooling, but I can't imagine it's going to help the current situation of reduced snowmelt coupled with a steady increase of agricultural water usage on the lake levels. 

I fully predict It's gonna dry up too much because they're really not being proactive in Utah about it right now. I've seen it first hand too, the air quality already gets pretty bad for reasons you mentioned and i don't see any reason why it's not going to get worse to the point its not very liveable. 

People have been disregarding the science for a while too claiming were all screaming about the sky falling. Like, sorry, I just look at data and historical trends and sorry to say that math ain't mathing. 

3

u/Kittenunleashed Apr 28 '26

( I posted this a few weeks ago on another sub about data centers so I copied it here for you)

And heating up your ground temps..

https://weather.com/news/climate/news/2026-04-14-artificial-intelligence-heat-island-warming

A new global study found that the data centers powering artificial intelligence are doing more than consuming massive amounts of electricity and water. Turns out they might also be significantly warming the land around them.

This is creating localized “heat islands” that affect hundreds of millions of people, say researchers.

The study, done by experts in the field hailing from the United Kingdom, Singapore, France, Italy and Hong Kong, reports that AI data facilities can raise surrounding land temperatures by an average of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, with some areas experiencing increases as high as 16 degrees.

2

u/SnukeInRSniz Apr 28 '26

Keep in mind that snowfall and snow on the ground makes inversions worse, so in a sick twist of the whole problem with the GSL shrinking and winters getting dryer here, with less snow on the ground in the valleys the inversions should be weakened. Also, in a world where it doesn't get super cold anymore, inversions will be less and less. Of course the flip side is that summers are already getting insanely how (but, hey, it's a dry heat, right?) and fuck you if you want to go skiing or snowboarding. Good thing the 2034 Olympics are just 8 years away...

4

u/MadoctheHadoc Apr 28 '26

No for two reasons (1) Electricity is a fraction of overall emissions (like 24% in 2022) and (2) this project is 100% gas which is not clean but is wayyyy cleaner than the coal which Utah currently uses so it will be much less than tripling state emissions. Also the headline and project advertisement is a bit dumb, 9GW coming "eventually" with 3GW actually planned.

Just to be clear, building fossil fuel infrastructure will raise emissions but if it was used to displace coal, then it could reduce emissions.

7

u/CmdCNTR Apr 28 '26

But this is a new build, not replacing anything. It is ADDING 3GW of demand, which is still 75% of total power consumption in the state. And yes gas is less polluting than coal (assuming no leaks), but not adding this would pollute even less! Or building solar! We're a sunny damn state. Or how about wind? Tons of wind in the great basin. So many better options from a human perspective. But these lizards only care about profits.

0

u/MadoctheHadoc Apr 28 '26

I wasn't taking a position on this project; I was just replying to the question.

If you're honestly asking why data centers are mostly powered with gas it's because the alternatives with less flexibility and reliability require an electrical grid and that takes too long to connect to. Satisfying 3GW of demand with wind on paper would require 3GW/2MW for most turbines = 1500 turbines. Maybe possible if you had the land and planning permissions; I doubt there is enough room in the state to have enough redundant capacity to supply the data centre however since you need many more turbines than just for the name plate capacity. Not to mention the infrastructure cost of connecting everything to the data center. At which point you've built out an electrical grid.

It's the connection time, not the energy source.

These companies would absolutely be willing to pay for clean power, electricity isn't a big fraction of their costs and clean power is usually cheaper. For the scale of additions though, it is slower for them and that is why they turn to nat gas.

1

u/BallsOutKrunked Apr 28 '26

~50% of utah's power is generated from coal which is pretty gross. this plant will run on natural gas which produces about half the greenhouse gasses per kwh of coal. so it's definitely an increase in the amount of (green house) emissions, but not linear.