00:00Today, in more than 125 cities across 41 states, Americans are marching against data centers.
00:09The first coordinated national protest against the AI build-out in U.S. history.
00:14And the anger has plenty of fuel.
00:17In Georgia, the state's largest data center drew some 30 million gallons of water before anyone build it.
00:24And in West Virginia, one construction site has now flooded the same neighborhood twice.
00:31We begin with something that has never happened before in this industry.
00:36Today, in more than 125 locations across 41 states, Americans are gathering for a coordinated national day of protest against
00:47data centers.
00:48The demonstrations, organized by the advocacy group Humans First, stretch from Cheyenne, Wyoming to Spartanburg, South Carolina, with Texas, the
01:01country's data center leader, hosting 17 protests all by itself.
01:06Organizers say their mission is to protect hometowns, wallets, and ways of life from projects negotiated in backroom deals.
01:15And the numbers explain why it's resonating.
01:19Gallup polling finds 70% of Americans don't want a data center in their own community.
01:25And researchers at data center watch estimate $64 billion in projects have already been blocked or delayed by local opposition.
01:35What began as scattered zoning fights is now a national movement.
01:40Part of what's fueling that anger surfaced in Georgia.
01:44Fayette County officials investigating complaints about low water pressure discovered something remarkable at the QTS campus outside Fayetteville.
01:54The largest data center in the state, a 6.2 million square foot giant on 600 acres.
02:01Two water lines were feeding the site outside the county's billing system.
02:06And one of them alone was eventually billed for more than 20 million gallons.
02:12In total, roughly 30 million gallons flowed before anyone was charged a dime.
02:17And the county sent QTS a bill for $147,000.
02:23The county has since softened its accusations, saying a smart meter changeover left some meters untracked.
02:31And QTS insists the water went to dust control and concrete work during construction.
02:37Once operational, the company claims, the campus will use just 9,000 to 12,000 gallons a month through a
02:44closed-loop system.
02:46Neighbors whose taps slowed to a trickle remain skeptical.
02:51When these fights escalate, they increasingly end up in court.
02:55But this time it was the developer doing the suing.
02:59And the developer who lost in San Diego.
03:02Judge Cynthia Freeland threw out a defamation lawsuit that Sebastian Rucci and Imperial Valley
03:08Computer Manufacturing filed against public broadcaster KPBS and reporter Corey Suzuki over coverage
03:16of a proposed data center in Imperial County.
03:20Rucci claimed the reporting on the project's water use and environmental review omitted key facts
03:26and cast him in a false light.
03:29The judge disagreed, striking the complaint under California's anti-SLAPP statute.
03:36A law built to shut down meritless suits that target free speech.
03:41And noting that none of the information in the articles was actually incorrect.
03:46Rucci says he plans to keep pursuing legal action.
03:50For now, the ruling stands as a warning to the industry.
03:54Suing the journalists who cover your project can backfire badly.
03:59In West Virginia, the conflict isn't playing out in hearing rooms.
04:04It's washing into living rooms runoff from the Monarch Compute Campus construction site in Mason.
04:11County flooded the Meadowlands Estates neighborhood on July 11th,
04:16sending water and mud across yards and into homes.
04:19The second flood since construction began this year.
04:23Monarch had added silt fencing, double barrier rows,
04:27berms, and new drainage paths after the first breach in May.
04:32The storms overwhelmed them anyway.
04:35State regulators have now issued an enforcement order halting work in part of the site's drainage
04:40area until stormwater controls are rebuilt and pass inspection.
04:46And Monarch is going further.
04:48A voluntary buyout program for the neighborhood,
04:51with roughly 30 homes already in process,
04:55paying the highest of three independent appraisals plus a premium.
04:59When a data center starts buying up the neighborhood it flooded.
05:03The stakes are no longer abstract.
05:06And now Washington is stepping in.
05:09The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has ordered the nation's grid watchdog,
05:14NERC,
05:16to write the first-ever mandatory reliability standards for what it calls computational loads,
05:22data centers,
05:24AI campuses,
05:25and crypto mines.
05:27The deadline is December 31st of this year.
05:31Regulators didn't act on a hunch.
05:33NERC has documented multiple grid disturbances in which massive data center loads caused or
05:40contributed to instability on the bulk power system,
05:44including incidents where facilities suddenly dropped hundreds of megawatts of demand in an instant.
05:50The order also requires a registry that brings large computational load operators directly under
05:57the mandatory reliability framework,
06:01with a second phase of standards due next spring.
06:04For an industry that has largely operated outside the grid rulebook,
06:09the message is unmistakable.
06:11If you're big enough to destabilize the system,
06:14you're big enough to be regulated.
06:17Local governments aren't waiting for Washington.
06:21In Southport,
06:22North Carolina,
06:23the planning board voted unanimously this week to ask the city's alderman for a 15-month
06:30moratorium on data centers.
06:32Remarkable,
06:34because no project has even been proposed there.
06:37The board had been drafting a zoning amendment to regulate data centers.
06:42But residents pushed back hard,
06:44asking why an outright ban wasn't on the table.
06:48Rather than pass the amendment,
06:50the board chose to freeze everything while a proper zoning framework is built from scratch.
06:56And Southport isn't alone this week.
06:58In Lyon County,
07:00Kansas,
07:01commissioners stopped accepting permit applications entirely and directed their attorneys to draft
07:07a six-month moratorium of their own,
07:10with a vote expected within days.
07:13Across the country,
07:15town by town and county by county,
07:18the default answer to data centers is quietly shifting from yes to not yet.
07:24Yet despite that regulatory wave,
07:27construction is pressing forward,
07:29and getting bigger.
07:31Crusoe and Lanceum have announced a 1-gigawatt AI data center campus in Childress,
07:37Texas,
07:38a panhandle town of about 6,000 people.
07:41The grid-connected campus will rise on 270 acres owned by Lanceum,
07:47which secures the land and the power interconnect while Crusoe designs,
07:52builds,
07:53and operates the data center,
07:55the same playbook the pair used in Abilene,
07:59where they energized their first buildings within a year of breaking ground and have since expanded
08:04that campus to 1.2 gigawatts.
08:08Construction begins in the third quarter of this year,
08:11bringing thousands of construction jobs and more than 100 long-term positions to Childress
08:17County.
08:18The design leans on closed-loop,
08:21non-evaporative liquid cooling to protect scarce panhandle water,
08:26plus behind-the-meter solar and battery storage to soften its draw on the Texas grid.
08:33And the financial machinery behind this build-out keeps finding new ways to sidestep the grid
08:39entirely.
08:41Which brings us to our kicker.
08:43Private credit firm Industrial Development Funding and Oaktree Capital Management have agreed to
08:49invest $1.7 billion to deploy Bloom Energy's solid oxide fuel cells across
08:57Nebius' AI data centers in the United States.
09:00Bloom will supply dedicated behind-the-meter power under an off-take agreement the two companies.
09:07Signed back in May,
09:09with IDF acting as lead developer on the project and Oaktree taking a minority equity stake,
09:16Nebius says it chose fuel cells for one reason above all others.
09:20Speed to power.
09:22In a market where waiting years for a utility interconnection can kill a project outright,
09:28a billion-dollar bet on generating your own electricity is no longer exotic.
09:33It's becoming the business model for the entire AI build-out.
09:50iciICAlert fato λ
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