Shut up and take our money: Amazon plows $1B into quashing datacenter dissent
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Faced with growing opposition to datacenters from residents who don't want the bit barns in their backyards, Amazon plans to invest $1 billion over the next five years to indoctrinate the public. The company announced the investment in a whataboutism-packed blog post aimed at convincing readers datacenters are not as bad as they've been led to believe, and that if the common folk don't get in line and support their development, the nation could be left in the dust.
The program aims to invest in education, job training, local infrastructure improvements, and sustainability initiatives in communities home to Amazon datacenters.
"This build out is so important geopolitically that there are widespread reports of various countries intentionally seeding misinformation in the US about datacenters to trick us into slowing down," the e-tailer turned cloud titan wrote. "Right now there are over 100 datacenter moratoriums being considered across the country. If these measures are enacted, the US could be writing its own losing ticket to this race, and the consequences would last generations."
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If Jeff Bezos's cash cow is to be believed, datacenters will transform the US economy much like the buildout of the highway system did in the '50s. But that can't happen, Amazon argues, if Americans block the development of these bit barns over misguided fears.
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The blog post highlights four such datacenter fears, which Amazon claims are "myths," despite plenty of reporting to suggest otherwise.
Who needs water?
The first "myth" is the fact that datacenters consume an excessive share of water. Bit barns commonly employ evaporative coolers which use water to reject heat generated by the facility into the atmosphere. These cooling towers use less energy than dry coolers or refrigerant-based systems but remove water from local watersheds as a consequence.
According to Amazon, citizens should really be more worried about the water consumed by golf courses, which it claims use 200x more water than all of Amazon's datacenters. That argument might be more convincing if people didn't like golf courses. But they do and the whole lesser of two evils argument works a lot better when one of those evils isn't extremely popular.
Amazon also attempted to dispel claims that a typical datacenter consumes five million gallons a day, arguing that its facilities are much more efficient using just 13,000 gallons a day, the equivalent of 42 US households. But this leaves out an important detail.
It is possible to build datacenters that don't consume large quantities of water, but these facilities often consume large sums of power as a consequence. Most gas, nuclear, coal, and anything else that uses steam to turn a turbine also consumes water. In other words, nearly every large-scale power-generation method uses water either directly or indirectly.
And despite Amazon's attempts to downplay the impact of datacenters, there's good reason for those living nearby to be worried. Earlier this year, it was reported that a datacenter, which we'll note was not operated by Amazon, has quietly sucked up nearly 30 million gallons of water and the only reason anyone discovered the issue was that local residents started complaining of unusually low water pressure.
We totally won't let datacenters drive up your power bill or poison your air
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Amazon also attempted to dispel fears that datacenters could leave neighboring residents picking up the tab for their massive power consumption. The company argues that rates are going up because the US grid is old, and that responsible bit barn builders are working with utilities to ensure they're paying their fair share for the additional capacity and infrastructure upgrades required to support them.
What wasn't addressed is why folks might be worried about rising rates. One of the reasons that utilities and plant operators are so conservative is that they've been burned by speculative markets before. If new power plants are built to meet demand that never materializes, ratepayers could get stuck with the bill. Amazon and others agreeing to pay higher rates might help, but only if they're consuming an appreciable amount of the capacity they convinced utilities to build. An empty datacenter doesn't pull a lot of juice.
Speaking of power, Amazon also attempted to downplay the impact of datacenters on air quality due to their reliance on diesel backup generators. "The truth is the datacenter generators almost never run," the company wrote.
Amazon also argued that these generators are subject to stringent permitting requirements which dictate how long they can run for. That might be more reassuring if datacenters in power constrained regions weren't getting permission after the fact to exceed those limits.
And, as we saw with Elon Musk's Colossus supercomputer, temporary gas turbines can be deployed when the local grid can't support the load. That hasn't sat well with residents of Boxtown, Tennessee, while the NAACP is suing xAI over allegedly unpermitted turbines in Mississippi.
Amazon can argue it's got a better track record than most, but that doesn't mean the community's concerns are misplaced.
But think of the taxes
Finally, Amazon argues that folks don't realize how big of an economic impact datacenters have on their community.
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"Datacenter operators are often the single largest taxpayer in a community, with upfront payments routinely exceeding entire annual municipal budgets in the first year of construction," the company claimed. "For example, in St. Joseph County, Indiana, the taxes Amazon will pay to the county are estimated to exceed $3 billion."
The subtext is that, by enacting datacenter moratoriums, communities are walking away from billions in tax dollars. Then again, if the tax revenue from these facilities is so great, it raises the question why Amazon needs to spend more than $1 billion over five years sweetening the deal for communities hosting its bit barns. ®
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