A Message For Datacenter Developers: Get Your Act Together, Pronto

Yesterday, this post appeared on X describing a situation in which public utility Georgia Power is preparing to exercise eminent domain to condemn at least thirty homes which find themselves in the way of a big datacenter development. Georgia Power says the homes block the path for it to build a major transmission line to supply power to the new datacenter.

That is Georgia Power’s right under the law, but that doesn’t make it the right thing to do here. As we in the oil and gas industry learned the hard way during the fracking wars in the first decade of this century, smart companies should only be willing to exercise eminent domain as the very last option, and even then it is not advisable because people in local communities will always react emotionally whenever it is done, as they frankly should.

Here’s the full video of the young lady featured in that post who is trying to save her family’s home in which she grew up:

I gotta tell you, this is the dumbest move I’ve seen the datacenter industry make so far. The developers of that datacenter should, if they’re smart, be leaning HARD on Georgia Power to immediately halt its attempt to exercise Eminent Domain and develop an alternate route for its transmission line, at the very least.

An even better idea would be for the developer to announce - TODAY - that it no longer needs Georgia Power to supply electricity to its installation and will instead build its own.

Here’s the post I wrote about this situation on X yesterday:

Dear #Datacenter developers: You folks had better get your act together pronto in terms of honestly and transparently addressing the very real concerns of real people like the young lady in the video here, or your ability to compete with China in the #AI space will come to a crashing halt.

Pro tip: As we in the oil and gas industry found out the hard way 20 years ago, it is in your best interest to deal with these issues in an upfront and honest way. Trying to deflect them away with canned talking points from spokesmen like MrWonderful @kevinolearytv Kevin O’Leary is doing right now WILL NOT GET IT DONE.

You need to get real people - not public officials, not celebrities - who live in these areas on the ground communicating with their fellow locals with real solutions and mitigations to their real issues.

O’Leary keeps claiming that all the people opposing his Utah data center are paid protesters who are bused into the area.

That’s only partly true.

The other part is made up of real people like this young lady who have real, valid concerns about what you are doing. Address those real, valid concerns in an open and transparent way, and you will defeat those paid astroturf protesters.

The locals are much smarter than you think they are, and they can spot frauds a mile away. Your task is to avoid being identified among those frauds by young ladies like this one.

Fail to do that, and your industry will fail, at enormous cost to your companies and our nation.

I learned all of these lessons while being in the middle of the #fracking fight throughout the entirety of the #shalerevolution.

There were times early in that fight when the oil and gas industry was in real jeopardy of losing its license to operate because some bad actor companies refused to do the right thing.

You folks need to learn those lessons, and do it fast, or you will lose this war.

That is all.

[End]

That is all.