OPINION — I believe most people who are opposed to AI data centers like Project Baccara in the West Valley are misinformed.
People hear that their power bill will go up. However, the existing Ratepayer Protection Pledge brought together tech titans including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI, Oracle and xAI — who agreed to pay for their own electricity generation infrastructure to power their data center operations while providing additional capacity to bolster the public’s power supply. Under this agreement, ratepayers should not see an increase in their electricity bills.
Then there is water consumption. A data center recirculates water through a closed cooling system with limited evaporation. It works like our golf courses, which reuse their own water, albeit with more evaporation.
