Data Centers....
Seems to be in the news a lot lately. We had one proposed the next small town over.
They were going to build a 310-watt power generation plant (natural gas obviously) and a 310 megawatt (ostensibly) data center next to it. It was met with vehement opposition from the community. Now mind you, the town that this was going near is home to a very large petrochemical complex, complete with flare stacks, tank farms, cooling towers, rail lines, etc. A whole complex industrial facility literally crossing highways and pipelines every where.
And the whole county is full of them. Refineries, crackers, plastics production, tank farms, flare stacks, a harbor with giant tankers come in and out daily. We make gasoline, olefins, plastics, industrial gasses, acids, glycol, epoxy. The list goes on and on. Nobody hardly ever protests jack didly when they build these other facilities.
But they add a data center and power plant and they turn up on Facebook (!) by the thousands to protest. They're worried about the water use, the air pollution, the green house gas emission's. Nobody here even believes in greenhouse gasses or climate change, but they're worried about the green house gasses.