- Some scientists are expressing concerns over the ecological impact of a 60-square-mile data center in Box Elder County.
- BYU professor Ben Abbott said it could change the climate in northern Utah, especially around the Great Salt Lake.
- Heat production remains a significant issue, with Robert Davies of Utah State saying the heat island effect would be significant.
SALT LAKE CITY — With dozens of questions lingering around how a 60-square-mile data center campus would operate, some scientists are raising concerns over what they see as likely detrimental impacts.
Dr. Ben Abbott, a professor of ecology at Brigham Young University, and executive director of Slow The Flow, said large amounts of heat that would be created to generate up to 9 gigawatts of power at maximum scale could change the climate and ecology of the surrounding area around Box Elder County's Hansel Valley.
"This could change the climate of the northern end of Utah, including Great Salt Lake," Abbott said. "There are always unintended consequences. If you look right around that valley, we have farmers, we have ranchers, we have wildlife (and) we have Great Salt Lake. All of those would be impacted just by the thermal footprint of this operation."
Abbott bases his concerns around calculations that Robert Davies, a professor of physics at Utah State University, said are based on basic laws of physics. In the production of energy, often more than half is wasted.
"So in order for the power plant to give the data center 9 gigawatts, it's going to have to actually generate or burn through 16 gigawatts or so," Davies explained. "So there's 7 or 8 gigawatts of waste heat from the power plant and then 9 gigawatts that gets used by the data center. All of that gets turned into heat and dumped into the valley. And that's very straightforward physics."
O'Leary Digital, the company co-founded by Shark Tank's Kevin O'Leary, said power would be generated off-grid, from natural gas taken from a Nevada pipeline. And while O'Leary Digital has not released specific details on how that process would move forward, it said the power plant that would power the data center will produce only 5% of the emissions of typical gas-powered plants. The facility would also produce electricity, using little to no water. At full buildout, some of the nearly 9 gigawatts of power would be sent into Utah's power grid.
Davies does not see a way around the massive production of heat.
"All of that energy turns into heat, and then that heat needs to get dumped into the environment in some way," he said, adding that the heat island effect on that scale could raise temperatures by 8 degrees, shooting up more than 20 degrees during evening inversions.
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Proposed mega data center draws concerns over 'heat island effect'
Increases in temperatures around so-called urban heat domes, or heat islands, could apply to a massive data center that is proposed for the northwestern side of Box Elder County.Abbott adds that even if all energy consumption concerns are addressed, a project at this scale cannot escape the impact to land and wildlife.
"This is 40,000 acres of habitat," Abbott said. "And currently we're losing our wilderness in Utah. And I'm not talking about a wilderness designation, but we're losing open and wild spaces."
With that, however, Abbott adds a caveat:
"I'm not categorically anti-data center. There are responsible ways to move forward, and we need innovation," he said. "For me, the response is we need to see the data. If this is next-gen technology, share the data."
