A plan to create one of the world’s largest datacenters, a gargantuan project spanning an area more than twice the size of Manhattan, has provoked a furious public backlash in Utah amid concerns over its vast energy use and impact upon the state’s stressed water supplies.
The Stratos artificial intelligence datacenter footprint will cover more than 62 square miles over three sites in Box Elder county in northwestern Utah. The facility will require about 9GW of power, more than the entire state of Utah currently consumes, and suck up a significant amount of water in an area that has been hit by severe drought in recent years.
Anticipated jobs don't outweigh the longer-term impacts to Utah and beyond, critics say. Stratos is expected to raise the state’s planet-heating pollution by about 50% by consuming a huge amount of energy and water to power and cool itself, according to one impact analysis.
Get this: The network of industrial-scale fans needed to cool the datacenter’s hot pipes will result in so much waste heat that it might raise daytime temperatures in the surrounding Hansel valley by two to five degrees and night-time temperatures by eight to 12 degrees, according to an analysis by Rob Davies, a physics professor at Utah State University.
“The thermal load from the proposed Stratos project is extreme,” Davies said. “Of course it has effects. One of those effects is this: this facility imposes substantial drying on a watershed and ecosystem already in active collapse.”
Kevin Leary (yes, that Kevin Leary) is one of the backers. “What’s happening in Utah right now, we think over 90% of the protesters are actually not people who live in Utah or Box Elder County,” O’Leary said in a video he posted to X yesterday. “They’re being bused in.”
Of course they are, Kevin. Keep telling yourself that.
