Do Data Centers Raise Electric Bills and Drain Water? Power, Water, Jobs, and Taxes

Listen with Bella · 12 min

I've spent my career building large power infrastructure. So when people ask me about data center impact on communities, I don't answer from a think tank. I answer from the builder's side of the table at the public meeting, the side where you sit with your drawings and your load letters while the people in the folding chairs decide whether they trust you. Here's what that side of the table teaches you fast: the community does not care what you call the building. Data center, mine, campus, refinery. None of that matters. They care about four things. The meter on the side of their house. The water line that runs to their kitchen. The noise at two in the morning. And the tax bill that shows up every year whether they wanted the project or not.

Those are the right four things to care about, and this chapter is organized around them. The questions people type into search engines are the same ones they ask at the microphone. Do data centers raise electric bills? How much water does a data center use? How many jobs does a data center actually create? Does the tax revenue make up for the incentives? Each one has a real answer that depends on records, and each one gets muddied by numbers that are true somewhere and misapplied everywhere else.

Here's what the evidence will show, including the uncomfortable part. The national numbers on electricity and water are large, well-constructed, and model-based, and they tell you to plan without telling you where. The best state-level audit I've seen found that one state's rates were fairly allocating costs at the time of the study, and in the same breath modeled a residential bill increase by 2040 under growth scenarios. One utility tariff shows a serious attempt to put the risk of underused capacity on the big customer instead of on households, and it's an attempt, not a proven outcome. The job numbers are real and routinely misread. The fiscal numbers vary so much by locality that the word "typical" barely applies. And no one has produced a complete national inventory of data center water use.

Now the part I owe you before anything else. Savrn is built around behind-the-meter power and a zero-makeup-water design goal. Those are Savrn's claims. They are exactly the kind of claims this chapter teaches you to test, so the tests apply to us first. I'm not writing this to win an argument with residents. I'm writing it so a resident, a county commissioner, or a utility regulator can walk into the room with better questions than the developer expects, including when the developer is me.

10.1 Data Center Impact on Communities: Two Claims to Keep Apart#

I open with a boundary, because nearly every bad argument about computing infrastructure, on both sides, comes from violating it. A useful learning tool does not prove that a particular data center benefits its neighbors. Conversely, a poorly designed facility does not establish that every application running on computing infrastructure lacks value. The application's benefit and the facility's local effects are separate claims, supported by separate evidence, and I keep them apart on every page of this chapter.

That separation isn't evasive. It's how the evidence is actually organized. The chapters on schooling and working life established that specific, bounded applications of these systems can produce measured benefit in defined settings. Nothing in those findings says anything about what a given facility does to its host community's power bills, water supply, noise environment, or tax base. And nothing a community experiences locally says anything about whether a tutoring program three states away works. Both directions of the inference are unsupported, and I won't make either.

10.1.1 Why the merged argument is so tempting#

The merge happens because each side wants the other side's evidence to carry its conclusion. A promoter who can point at a promising study of students or workers wants that benefit to travel down the transmission line and land in the county that hosts the servers. It doesn't. The students who benefit may live nowhere near the facility, and the county's bill, water, and noise questions are untouched by their test scores.

The opponent's version runs the other way. A facility that was sited badly, loud at night, or approved on thin fiscal analysis becomes proof that the whole technology is worthless. It isn't. A badly run gas station does not prove cars have no value. It proves that particular gas station needed better conditions.

Here's the part most people skip. Keeping the claims apart helps residents more than it helps developers. When the benefit argument is allowed to stand in for the local argument, the local questions never get answered, because the room has already been told the project is "good for the future." Separate the claims and the local questions come back to the center of the table, where they belong.

10.1.2 What Savrn's stated objective is, and is not#

Savrn's stated objective of improving the relationship between data centers and communities is treated here as a commitment to test, not as evidence that any particular facility has already met it. The community standard I propose is outcome-based: identify the actual power and water dependencies, allocate costs transparently, measure local operating effects, and make commitments enforceable. Communities should be able to approve, modify, defer, or reject a project on that record.

One more boundary, and it matters. This chapter is national research and documented regulatory cases. It is not a site-specific engineering, fiscal, or environmental assessment, and no sentence in it should be read as one. If you are deciding on a specific parcel, a specific feeder, or a specific tax agreement, the records for that site govern. This chapter tells you which records to ask for and how to read them.

10.1.3 What this means for different readers#

• Resident: You don't need to form an opinion on artificial intelligence to form an opinion on a facility. Ask about your meter, your water, your nights, and your taxes, and ask for the records behind each answer.
• County commissioner: Separate the economic development pitch from the local obligations. A company's national story is not a condition in your agreement.
• Utility regulator: National load growth is context. The docket in front of you is about a specific tariff, a specific service territory, and a specific allocation of costs.
• Investor: A community that can see the record is a community that can say yes with confidence. Projects approved on vague claims carry risk that surfaces later.

10.2 How Much Electricity Do Data Centers Use Nationally?#

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's December 2024 report estimated that United States data centers used approximately 176 TWh of electricity in 2023, about 4.4 percent of national electricity consumption. The qualifiers attach immediately: these are model-based estimates, not a complete facility-level meter census, and they describe a national total assembled from modeled server categories, utilization rates, cooling assumptions, and infrastructure characteristics. (LBNL report)

The same report presented 2028 scenarios of approximately 325 to 580 TWh, equivalent to 6.7 to 12 percent of projected national electricity consumption under its assumptions. Those numbers need three labels that are often dropped. They are scenarios from a 2024 report, not actual 2026 consumption. They are ranges across modeled futures, not a statistical confidence interval. And the underlying total covers data centers broadly; it should not be described as electricity used exclusively by generative models. The report's separate discussion of cryptocurrency mining belongs to a different series and should not be silently added to or confused with the principal data center figures. (LBNL scenarios and methods)

10.2.1 What a model-based national estimate actually is#

Here's what the report actually did, in plain English. Nobody walked around the country reading every data center meter and adding them up. That census doesn't exist. Instead, the researchers built the total from parts: how many servers of each kind are out there, how hard they typically run, how much cooling and power conversion each kind of facility needs on top of the computing itself, and how those assumptions add up across the country. That's a respectable way to estimate a national quantity when the direct measurement isn't available. It also means the number inherits every assumption that went into it.

So when you see "176 TWh" or "4.4 percent," read it as "the best available modeled estimate of the national total for 2023." Don't read it as "the sum of every bill paid by every facility." The difference matters when someone uses the number to argue about precision it doesn't have.

10.2.2 Why a scenario range is not a confidence interval#

This is one of the most common misreadings I see, and it matters. A confidence interval comes from statistics: you measured a sample, and the interval describes uncertainty about the true value given that sample. A scenario range is something else. The researchers asked, in effect, "if the future goes this way, what's the total? If it goes that way, what's the total?" The low end and the high end are different stories about the future, each with its own assumptions about equipment, efficiency, and growth.

That means you can't say "the true 2028 value is probably somewhere in the middle." The range doesn't carry that meaning. And you certainly can't say "data centers will use 580 TWh in 2028," because that's picking one scenario and dropping the word scenario. Read that again: the high end is a scenario, not a forecast, and the low end is a scenario too.

10.2.3 Three misreadings to retire#

1. "Generative models use 176 TWh." No. The total covers data centers broadly. It includes the whole range of computing those facilities do.
2. "Data centers use 12 percent of U.S. electricity." No. That's the top of a 2028 scenario range expressed as a share of projected consumption, under the report's assumptions. The 2023 estimate is about 4.4 percent.
3. "Add crypto and it's even bigger." Maybe, but the report treats cryptocurrency mining as a separate series. Adding the two together yourself, without the report's own method, creates a number the report never produced. I have no interest in hiding crypto load. I have an interest in not double-counting it or smuggling it into a different series.

10.2.4 What national scale can and cannot tell a county#

The right use of national evidence is modest: it establishes the importance of planning. A national total does not determine whether a specific feeder, transmission zone, utility, or community can accommodate a particular load. The question "can this grid serve this facility" is answered by interconnection studies, feeder data, and utility resource plans for that service territory. Those records exist at a different level of the system than the LBNL national model. Scale tells you to plan; it cannot tell you where.

If a speaker at a hearing cites the national total to argue that your county's grid is fine, or that your county's grid is doomed, the number is being asked to do something it can't do. The response is simple and polite: "That's a national model estimate. What do the interconnection study and the utility's resource plan for our service territory say?"

10.3 How Power Actually Reaches a Data Center#

Before we look at bills, you need a working picture of how a large load gets connected to the grid and who pays for what. I'm going to explain this conceptually. No numbers here, because the numbers are always specific to a utility, a tariff, and a site, and a chapter that invented them would be doing exactly what I'm warning you about. What I can give you is the map of the machinery, from someone who has spent a lot of time inside it.

10.3.1 Interconnection: asking permission to plug in#

A large facility can't just run a wire to the nearest pole. The utility, and often the regional grid operator, has to study whether the system can carry the new load without overloading lines, transformers, or substations, and without degrading service to everyone else. That study is the interconnection process. It asks where the load connects, how much it draws, how fast it ramps, and what upgrades the system needs to serve it safely.

The output is a set of findings and, usually, a list of required upgrades. Some of those upgrades serve only the new customer, like a dedicated substation. Others strengthen shared parts of the system that other customers also use. That distinction, dedicated versus shared, is where most of the cost-allocation argument starts.

I have sat in enough utility interconnection meetings to know that the study is where reality shows up. The press release says a facility "will" be a certain size. The interconnection study says what the system can actually serve, when, and with what upgrades. When a community wants to know whether a project is real, the interconnection record is often more informative than the announcement.

10.3.2 Tariffs: the rulebook for what a customer pays#

A tariff is the published set of rates, terms, and conditions a utility uses to charge a class of customers, approved by the state utility commission. Residential customers have tariffs. Commercial and industrial customers have tariffs. Some states now have tariffs written specifically for very large new loads like data centers, as the Ohio example later in this chapter shows.

The tariff matters because it decides which costs the large customer pays directly and which costs get spread across the customer base through general rates. When a utility builds something to serve growth, the money has to come from somewhere. If the large customer's tariff and contract cover it, households don't. If they don't, some share can flow into the rates everyone pays. That's the whole game in rate cases: who carries which cost, and what happens if the load doesn't show up as promised.

10.3.3 Underuse and cancellation risk#

Here's a risk most residents never hear about. A utility plans and sometimes builds for a load that a customer said it would bring. If that customer then uses much less than planned, delays for years, or cancels, the utility may be left with investments that were sized for demand that never arrived. Without protections, those stranded costs can end up in general rates.

Protections take a few forms: minimum payments tied to contracted capacity whether or not the customer uses it, collateral posted up front, exit fees for leaving early, and reimbursement if the customer cancels before the service is energized. None of these are exotic. They're how you make the party who created the risk carry it.

10.3.4 Curtailment: can the facility turn down when the grid is stressed#

Curtailment means reducing a load on request, usually when the grid is strained. Some facilities can shift or pause part of their computing; others run workloads that can't be interrupted. A claim that a facility "can curtail" is only meaningful if it says what the contractual right is, what loads are excluded as critical, whether the response has been tested, and what compensation, if any, applies.

This is a place where operating experience is directly relevant. A flexible load that actually drops when asked is a grid asset. A load that says it's flexible but has never been tested, or that excludes most of its consumption as critical, isn't the same thing. Ask for the contract and the test record.

10.3.5 Backup power: what runs when the main supply doesn't#

Every serious facility has a plan for when its primary supply fails or is down for maintenance. Sometimes that's on-site generators. Sometimes it's the grid itself. The backup plan affects the community in three ways: it may rely on public infrastructure at the worst possible moments, it may involve fuel deliveries and storage, and backup equipment gets tested on a schedule, which has noise and emissions consequences. A power story that skips backup is half a story.

10.3.6 Cost allocation: the question behind every bill question#

Put the pieces together and "do data centers raise electricity bills" turns into a sharper question: under the governing tariff and contracts, which costs of serving this load are paid by the large customer, which are spread across other customers, and who carries the risk if the load changes? That question can be answered with records. The general question can't.

10.4 Do Data Centers Raise Electricity Bills? What Virginia's Audit Found#

Virginia's legislative audit, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission's 2024 study of data centers, is the most thorough state-level fiscal examination in the reviewed research. It found that existing rates appropriately allocated current costs at the time of its study, while also warning that future growth could increase system costs. These findings address different periods and different questions. They are not contradictory, and quoting one without the other misrepresents both. (JLARC data center report)

The report modeled a potential increase of roughly $14 to $37 per month in a typical Dominion residential bill by 2040 under its examined scenarios. Three limits apply. That is a modeled 2040 outcome under stated assumptions, not an observed 2026 bill increase. It is a Virginia-specific result from a Virginia-specific load forecast, not a nationwide figure. And it is a range across scenarios, not a prediction that any particular project produces any particular effect. A campaign flyer that converts the top of that range into a present-tense bill increase is manufacturing a fact the audit never produced. (JLARC scenario analysis)

10.4.1 Why "fair now" and "risk later" are both true#

People on both sides of a hearing like to quote half of this audit. The supporter says, "Virginia's own auditors found the rates were fair." The opponent says, "Virginia's own auditors found bills could go up." Both are quoting accurately, and both are misrepresenting the report.

Here's the plain reading. At the time of the study, the cost of serving existing data centers was being allocated appropriately through existing rates. That's a finding about the present, about costs that had already been incurred and a customer base that already existed. Separately, the auditors looked ahead and said growth could raise system costs. That's a finding about a future that depends on how much load arrives, what has to be built to serve it, and how the rules allocate those new costs. One statement is a snapshot. The other is a warning about a trajectory. You need both to understand the report.

10.4.2 How to read the $14 to $37 range#

Take the three limits one at a time, because each one gets dropped in public argument.

• Modeled, 2040, under stated assumptions. It isn't a bill anyone received. It's what the model produced for a future year given assumptions about load growth and the investments needed to serve it.
• Virginia-specific. It comes from Virginia's load forecast and a typical Dominion residential bill. Your state has a different utility, different tariffs, different growth, and different generation. The number doesn't travel.
• A range across scenarios. The low and high ends are different scenarios. Nobody should present the high end as the expected outcome, or the low end as the guaranteed outcome.

A number without a denominator is a rumor. In this case the denominator is Virginia's system, Dominion's typical residential customer, the year 2040, and the auditors' scenarios. Strip those away and what's left is a rumor with a dollar sign.

10.4.3 What a resident should take from the Virginia audit#

The useful lesson for a resident anywhere isn't the dollar range. It's the structure. A state with serious data center growth looked carefully and found that the present allocation was fair while the future carried real risk. That tells you where to look in your own state: not at whether today's rates are fair in the abstract, but at whether the rules for new large loads protect households from the cost of future growth. That's a tariff and contract question, which is exactly what the Ohio case addresses.

10.5 The AEP Ohio Data Center Tariff: Shifting Risk to the Large Customer#

AEP Ohio provides the documented counterexample on the allocation side. The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio approved its data center tariff settlement in July 2025, with the utility listing an effective date of July 23, 2025. The published process includes minimum contract-capacity ramps, a term extending beyond the ramp period, potential collateral and exit obligations, and reimbursement requirements for specified cancellations or delays before energization. (Commission announcement, utility tariff process)

The accurate label for that design is this: a documented attempt to shift underuse and cancellation risk toward the large customer rather than leaving it with residential ratepayers by default. It is not a measured finding that all ratepayer risk has been eliminated. The ramp, collateral, and exit terms address specific risks under specific contracts, and residual risk depends on enforcement, counterparties, and facts that only time and dockets will produce.

10.5.1 What each tariff element does, in plain English#

Each piece of the Ohio structure answers one of the risks I described in Section 10.3.

• Minimum contract-capacity ramps. The customer commits to paying for a minimum share of the capacity it asked for, stepping up over a ramp period. If it uses less, it still pays the minimum. That protects other customers from paying for capacity reserved for a load that doesn't arrive.
• A term extending beyond the ramp. The commitment doesn't end the moment the ramp finishes. It runs long enough to matter against the life of the investments made to serve the customer.
• Collateral. Where required, the customer posts security up front, so if it fails financially, there's something to draw on besides the rate base.
• Exit obligations. Leaving early has a cost, which discourages speculative requests and compensates the system when someone walks away.
• Reimbursement before energization. If the customer cancels or delays in specified ways before it's even connected, it reimburses costs the utility incurred on its behalf.

Put together, the structure says: the party that creates the planning risk carries it. That's the right principle. Whether it works in practice depends on the contracts, the enforcement, and the financial strength of the counterparties.

10.5.2 What the Ohio tariff does not prove#

It doesn't prove that no Ohio household will ever pay any cost associated with data center growth. It doesn't prove the terms will be enforced as written in every case. It doesn't prove that the same design would work, or be approved, in another state. And it doesn't tell you anything about water, noise, jobs, or taxes. It's one well-documented tool for one category of risk.

10.5.3 A summary page is a map, not the territory#

One more discipline applies to every utility webpage cited in this report: a project decision requires review of the governing tariff, applicable commission orders, executed agreements, and current litigation status. A summary page is a map, not the territory. I cite the utility page and the commission announcement because they document that the structure exists. If you're a commissioner or a regulator relying on it, pull the actual tariff sheets and orders, and check whether anything has changed since.

10.5.4 What this means for a resident in another state#

If your state doesn't have a large-load tariff like this, that's not proof that households are exposed. Existing tariffs and contracts may already carry some of these protections. But it's a question worth asking out loud: "If this customer uses less than it reserved, or cancels, who pays for what was built to serve it?" If nobody in the room can answer with a document, that's your answer for now.

10.6 Behind the Meter Power and "Not Taking Community Power"#

Community meetings about data centers generate a phrase I propose to retire: "the facility will not take community power." It is not evaluable as stated, and unevaluable claims resolve in favor of whoever makes them. Replace it with bounded questions and the evidence each requires.

10.6.1 Why each question is there#

Every row in that table maps to a way the slogan can be true on paper and false in practice.

Normal operation. A facility can be served mostly by one source and still depend on another. The supply arrangement and interconnection configuration tell you what's physically connected and what's contractually promised. The load profile tells you how much and when.

Outages and maintenance. This is where "not taking community power" most often breaks. If the backup supply is the grid, then at exactly the moments when the primary source is down, the facility leans on the public system. That may be perfectly acceptable, but it has to be stated, planned for, and paid for.

Upgrades. Even a facility with its own generation may require utility work: a connection for backup, a substation modification, a transmission change. Who pays for that work is a tariff and contract question, not a slogan question.

Underuse and cancellation. If the utility builds anything in reliance on this customer, what happens if the customer shrinks or leaves? Section 10.5 shows one way to answer that.

Curtailment. If the facility draws from the grid at all, can it reduce that draw when the grid is stressed? Is that right written down, has it been tested, and which loads are exempt?

Verification. Promises made before construction need to be checked after operation. Metered load, recorded outages, compliance reports, and public reporting against the original commitments are how anyone finds out whether the power story was true.

10.6.2 The behind-the-meter caution#

One configuration deserves its own caution. A behind-the-meter design, generation on site feeding the facility directly, is not, by its label alone, proof of independence from public infrastructure. The claim must include backup operation, fuel supply, interconnection arrangements, emissions, and the other dependencies relevant to the actual configuration. A facility whose backup is the grid, whose fuel arrives by public road, and whose interconnection requires utility coordination is not independent of public infrastructure because its primary supply is on site. Labels are not evidence.

Let me say what "behind the meter" means in plain terms. Normally, power flows from the utility system, through a meter, into a customer. Behind-the-meter generation sits on the customer's side of that meter, producing power used on site. It can reduce what the customer draws from the grid, sometimes to very little in normal operation. What it doesn't automatically do is remove the facility from every public system. Fuel may travel by public road or pipeline. Emissions go into the shared air. Backup may come from the grid. And the connection, if there is one, still needs coordination with the utility.

That's why a behind-the-meter power data center has to answer all six questions just like any other facility. The answers may be different, and may be better for the community on some rows. But "behind the meter" is a configuration, not a verdict.

10.6.3 A hypothetical walk-through#

Here's a hypothetical, with no real site or numbers. A developer tells a county board its facility will run on on-site generation and "won't take community power." A commissioner walks the six rows.

• Normal operation: the developer shows the on-site generation design and a connection to the utility. The commissioner asks what that connection is for and how much it can carry.
• Outages: the developer says the grid provides backup. Now the commissioner knows the facility does depend on community power at specific times, and asks how often, how much, and under what terms.
• Upgrades: the connection requires some utility work. Who pays is in the tariff and agreement, which the commissioner asks to see.
• Underuse: if the utility builds anything for the backup connection, the commissioner asks what protects other customers if the facility leaves.
• Curtailment: if the facility draws from the grid during outages, can it limit that draw during system emergencies?
• Verification: what gets reported publicly after operation, and how often?

None of those answers is a trap. They're the difference between a slogan and a record. By the end, the commissioner can say something accurate like "this facility is designed to meet its normal load on site, relies on the grid for backup under these terms, and pays for these upgrades." That's a sentence a community can decide on.

10.7 Data Center Water Use: Define the Numerator First#

LBNL estimated approximately 66 billion liters of direct United States data center water consumption in 2023, and nearly 800 billion liters of indirect consumption associated with electricity supply. Those two categories describe different locations and different system boundaries. Direct use is water the facility withdraws for cooling and operations, while indirect use is water consumed upstream in the generation of the electricity the facility consumes. Neither figure is a site-specific permit reading or a meter total, and the two should never be added, swapped, or cherry-picked to suit a conclusion. (LBNL water analysis)

The Congressional Research Service's July 2026 review states that the United States Geological Survey has not conducted a systematic national assessment isolating data center water use. That is an important admission about the state of the evidence: available datasets and estimates should not be presented as a complete, reconciled inventory, because no complete, reconciled inventory exists at the national level. (CRS water report)

10.7.1 Direct and indirect water, explained#

Direct water is the water the building itself uses: mostly cooling, plus other operations. If a facility uses evaporative cooling, some of that water leaves as vapor and doesn't come back to the local source. That's the 66 billion liter category at the national level.

Indirect water is upstream. Many power plants use water for their own cooling, and some of that water is consumed. When a facility uses electricity, part of that upstream water consumption is attributable to it. That's the nearly 800 billion liter category. It happens wherever the electricity is generated, which may be far from the facility.

Here's why the boundary matters. A resident worried about their town's wells is asking mostly about direct use, and specifically about the local source. A policymaker worried about a river basin that supplies several power plants may care a great deal about indirect use. Both questions are legitimate. They're different questions, and they have different numerators.

10.7.2 Three ways the water numbers get abused#

1. Adding them. Direct plus indirect gives you a number that mixes two locations and two system boundaries. It might be useful in a carefully defined total-footprint analysis. Dropped into a local debate, it implies all that water comes from the host community, which it doesn't.
2. Swapping them. Using the indirect figure when talking about a town's water supply, or using only the direct figure to argue the whole footprint is small.
3. Cherry-picking them. Quoting whichever number suits the conclusion and ignoring the other.

Show me the denominator. And while you're at it, show me the numerator's boundary.

10.7.3 The vocabulary you need at a water hearing#

The appropriate project comparison has to be built record by record, distinguishing:

• Withdrawal versus consumption. Withdrawal is water taken from a source. Consumption is water not returned. A facility can withdraw a lot and return most of it, or withdraw less and consume most of it.
• Discharge quantity and quality. What goes back, how much, and in what condition.
• Potable versus nonpotable. Drinking-quality water competes directly with household supply. Nonpotable water may not.
• Direct versus upstream. On site versus at the power plant.
• Actual versus permitted. A permit sets what's allowed. Actual use is what's measured. They're rarely the same.
• Normal versus drought operation. A facility's water needs on a mild day and on the hottest week of a dry year may be very different, and the second is the one a community worries about.

A lower onsite cooling requirement does not itself answer questions about electricity-related water, construction water, domestic use, emergency operations, or local supply constraints. It answers one question about one design element.

10.7.4 Five common water claims and their minimum boundaries#

I propose minimum boundaries for the claims most often heard in public debate:

A few notes on reading that table.

"No water cooling" can be true of the cooling process and still leave restrooms, landscaping, cleaning, fire systems, and construction water. The claim has to say which.

"Closed loop" sounds like zero water, and it isn't automatically. A loop has to be filled once. It may need makeup water to replace losses. Maintenance drains and refills parts of it. Some systems bleed off water to control mineral buildup, which is called blowdown. And the heat has to go somewhere, so the heat-rejection method matters: if the loop's heat is rejected through an evaporative tower, the loop is closed but the facility still consumes water.

"Uses reclaimed water" is often good news, but reclaimed water may already have other users, may need treatment, and may not be reliable in every season.

"Low water intensity" is a ratio, and a ratio without a stated denominator is meaningless. Per what? Over what period? At what load? In what weather? Measured, or designed?

"No impact on residents" is the biggest claim, and no cooling specification can support it on its own. It needs local evidence on supply, quality, rates, and reliability.

10.7.5 The trade-off LBNL flags#

LBNL's own analysis makes the final point: there are trade-offs among cooling choices, including the relationship between onsite water use and energy requirements. A design assessed across only one resource can improve its headline number while worsening its total footprint. An air-cooled design that raises electricity demand raises indirect water consumption too. Success declared by minimizing one reported number is not success. (LBNL cooling analysis)

This one lands close to home for me, and I'll come back to it in the Savrn section. A zero-makeup-water goal addresses direct water. It doesn't erase the electricity question, and the electricity question carries its own water footprint depending on how the power is generated. Any credible water claim names both.

10.7.6 What this means for a resident worried about their well#

Your concern is local and specific, so your questions should be too. Where does the facility's water come from? Is it the same aquifer or utility that serves your home? Is it potable or nonpotable? How much is permitted, and how much will be reported as actually used? What happens in a drought? What gets discharged, and where? If the answers are a cooling brochure, you haven't been answered yet. National numbers, including the ones in this section, can't tell you about your well.

10.8 How Many Jobs Does a Data Center Create?#

Virginia's JLARC report describes a typical 250,000-square-foot data center as employing about 50 full-time workers in ongoing operations, approximately half of them contractors, while construction can involve a peak workforce around 1,500 over a roughly 12 to 18 month build period. Those are different categories across different time periods, and treating them as interchangeable is the most common job-count error in this debate. A 1,500-person construction peak and a 50-person operating staff are both real, and neither is the other. (JLARC employment findings)

The same report uses broader economic modeling that includes indirect and induced activity: supported jobs in supply chains and local spending. Such estimates answer a legitimate economic question about regional activity, but they should never be represented as the number of people permanently employed inside facilities. A multiplier is a model output, not a headcount, and a community deciding whether a project serves it needs to know which number it is looking at.

10.8.1 Three different job numbers, three different questions#

• Construction peak. How many people are on site at the busiest point of the build. JLARC's figure for a typical facility is around 1,500 over roughly 12 to 18 months. It's temporary by definition, and the peak is a peak, not an average.
• Ongoing operations. How many people work the facility once it's running. JLARC's figure is about 50 full-time workers, about half of them contractors. That's the permanent number, and it includes people who aren't the operator's own employees.
• Indirect and induced. Jobs supported elsewhere in the economy through suppliers and local spending. That's a modeled estimate of regional activity, not people inside the building.

When you build at industrial scale, the construction phase and the operating phase are different worlds. Construction brings trades and trucks. Operations are a much smaller, steadier crew. Both matter to a town. Neither should be sold as the other. That's operator experience, and it matches what the Virginia audit describes; it's not a substitute for the audit.

10.8.2 What the local employment record should contain#

The proposed local employment record states construction person-hours or job-years, peak headcount, ongoing employees, ongoing contractors, wage and qualification information, local-resident participation, and the period observed. Training seats and job announcements stay separate from completed training and actual employment. A commitment to train is a commitment, not a workforce.

10.8.3 The distribution question#

This is also a distribution question, and I insist on it. A project can create regional employment without employing many residents of the host neighborhood. That possibility should be evaluated and disclosed, not hidden by an aggregate number that averages the region over the host community. The people who hear the construction traffic and live near the substation are entitled to know whether the jobs are theirs or the next county's.

10.8.4 Common misreadings of data center jobs#

1. "This project will create 1,500 jobs." Maybe at the construction peak, for a limited period, if the project resembles JLARC's typical facility. Not permanently.
2. "Data centers only create 50 jobs, so they're worthless." The ongoing number is small relative to construction and to the size of the building. It isn't zero, and the fiscal and other effects still have to be weighed on their own records.
3. "The study says thousands of jobs are supported." Supported jobs from economic modeling are real estimates of regional activity. They aren't headcount inside the facility, and they aren't necessarily local.

10.9 Data Center Tax Revenue: Gross Revenue Is Not Net Benefit#

JLARC documents substantial variation in the share of local revenue associated with data centers among mature host localities. There is no typical answer to "what does a data center contribute to a local budget," because the answer depends on the locality's tax structure, land values, and incentive arrangements. The same audit documents a significant sales-and-use-tax exemption, which illustrates why tax receipts and incentives belong in the same fiscal analysis: a jurisdiction that exempts equipment from sales tax and then counts the property-tax revenue as pure benefit has counted one side of a ledger with two sides. (JLARC fiscal findings)

10.9.1 The full fiscal model#

The proposed fiscal model separates recurring revenues, one-time receipts, abatements, exemptions, public infrastructure costs, service costs, financing obligations, asset depreciation, and closure or redevelopment costs. It also identifies which jurisdiction receives each benefit and bears each obligation. That last item is where fiscal analysis most often quietly fails: the revenue lands in one government's books, the road and water upgrades land in another's, and no single ledger shows the project whole.

Here's what each line means in practice:

• Recurring revenues: taxes paid year after year, such as property taxes on land, buildings, and equipment where they apply.
• One-time receipts: fees and payments tied to permitting or construction that don't repeat.
• Abatements and exemptions: revenue the jurisdiction or state chose not to collect as an incentive. These belong on the same page as the revenue.
• Public infrastructure costs: roads, water and sewer extensions, and other public works needed to serve the site.
• Service costs: fire, emergency response, inspection, and other services the facility will use.
• Financing obligations: any public borrowing tied to the project.
• Asset depreciation: equipment taxed on value loses value over time, and so does the revenue it produces.
• Closure or redevelopment: what happens to the site, and who pays, if the facility shuts down.

10.9.2 Two disciplines that complete the picture#

First, an increase in the local tax base does not automatically reduce a household's tax bill. That conclusion requires the actual budget, assessment rules, tax rates, spending choices, and incidence analysis, and it sometimes comes out the other way. A county might use new revenue to lower rates, expand services, pay down debt, or some combination. Only the budget decisions determine what a household sees.

Second, scenario analysis should include delayed construction, lower realized load, changes in equipment value, tenant failure, and early closure. Those scenarios are risk tests, not predictions that a project will fail. A fiscal model that only runs the developer's case is a brochure with decimal points.

10.9.3 A hypothetical fiscal review#

Here's a hypothetical, with no real numbers. A county is presented with a revenue projection for a proposed facility. The finance director asks five questions. What incentives or exemptions apply, at the state and local level, and what is their value against the projected revenue? Which jurisdiction receives the revenue, and which pays for the road and water work? How does projected revenue change as equipment depreciates? What does the projection look like if construction slips, if the load comes in lower, or if the facility closes early? And what does the county intend to do with any net revenue? A presentation that can answer all five is a fiscal analysis. One that can't is a sales document.

10.10 Noise, Air, and Land Use Near Data Centers#

The Virginia audit identifies noise and proximity to residential areas as material local issues and discusses limitations in existing approaches to regulating them. Regional emissions totals, however well constructed, do not by themselves determine exposure at a particular property, which depends on stack location, terrain, operating hours, and what stands between the source and the receiver. (JLARC community and environmental findings)

10.10.1 What a credible noise record contains#

The proposed operating record includes measurement location, frequency characteristics, duration, operating mode, background conditions, and applicable limits. Generator testing, emergency operation, maintenance, and nighttime conditions belong in the record when relevant. Evaluating only a favorable daytime demonstration is a measurement choice, and it should be labeled as one.

In plain terms: where was the meter, what kind of sound was measured (a low hum travels and annoys differently from a higher-pitched whine), for how long, with the facility doing what, compared to what background, and against what limit? Noise that's fine at noon on a weekday can be a different story at night when the background drops. Anyone who has lived near large mechanical equipment knows that. I've built around it. The record should show the hard conditions, not only the easy ones.

10.10.2 Air and emissions#

A regional emissions total is useful for regional planning. It doesn't tell a family whether the air at their property is affected. Exposure depends on where the stacks are, the terrain, when equipment runs, and what's between the source and the house. That's why backup generation and its testing schedule belong in the community's record, and why on-site generation, including behind-the-meter designs, needs a local emissions answer and not only a regional one.

10.10.3 Land use and the limit of a permit#

Land-use review should cover construction traffic, drainage, setbacks, emergency access, and the compatibility of actual operations with nearby uses. And a permit establishes a regulatory status within its scope; it does not demonstrate all future operating conditions, and it does not replace continuing compliance measurement. The document that authorizes operation is the beginning of the accountability record, not the end of it.

10.11 A Community Benefit Compact That Can Change a Project#

The following compact is proposed as an implementation mechanism. It is not presented as an existing Savrn agreement or a proven universal template. It's what a credible accountability mechanism would have to contain, derived from the failure modes documented throughout this chapter.

• Baseline: Publish the initial resource, fiscal, and community conditions against which commitments will be measured.
• Obligations: Define each power, water, noise, employment, tax, and reporting commitment with a responsible entity and deadline.
• Verification: Identify measurement methods, access to records, reviewer qualifications, and treatment of confidential information.
• Remedy: Specify notice, correction periods, escalation, and enforceable consequences for material failures.
• Participation: Provide accessible reporting and a process for residents to challenge a measurement or interpretation.
• Change control: Require reassessment when load, cooling, generation, ownership, or operating conditions materially change.
• End of life: Allocate decommissioning, restoration, and unresolved public obligations before operation begins.

10.11.1 The enforceability criterion#

One requirement does the real work: the compact must allow an adverse result to change the project. A reporting process that cannot alter behavior, such as a dashboard that accumulates violations no one acts on, is insufficient for the accountability standard this report proposes. Measurement without consequence is surveillance of the community, by the community, for no one.

10.11.2 Why each element is there#

Baseline comes first because you can't measure a change without knowing the starting point. Water levels, noise at night, traffic, local revenue, and service costs all need a before picture.

Obligations turn promises into commitments with names and dates. "We'll be a good neighbor" isn't an obligation. "The operator will report measured nighttime sound at these locations each quarter" is.

Verification answers who checks, how, and with what access. Confidential business information is real, and the compact should say how it's handled rather than using it as a reason to report nothing.

Remedy is where most agreements go soft. Notice, a correction period, escalation, and consequences that actually apply. Without it, the other elements are paperwork.

Participation gives residents a way to challenge a number or an interpretation. Communities often notice problems before any report does.

Change control matters because projects change after approval. More load, a different cooling design, new generation, or a new owner can each change the community's exposure. The compact should require a fresh look when that happens.

End of life is the element everyone skips, because it feels far away. It isn't. Deciding before operation who pays to decommission and restore a site is far easier than deciding after a company has left.

10.12 The Savrn Test: Holding Our Own Claims to This Standard#

Now I turn the chapter on my own company. Savrn designs, builds, and delivers AI factories, purpose-built data centers. I've told you already that the community doesn't care what you call the building. So I won't hide behind the name. Everything in this chapter applies to Savrn at full strength.

Savrn is built around two design claims that matter here: behind-the-meter power, and closed-loop cooling with a zero-makeup-water design goal. Those are publisher statements. They are commitments to be verified, not achievements. Savrn has not achieved any metric in this chapter, and I won't write a sentence implying otherwise.

10.12.1 Behind-the-meter power must answer all six questions#

Section 10.6 says a behind-the-meter label is not proof of independence from public infrastructure. That sentence was written for everyone, and it's written for us first. For any Savrn facility, a community should be able to get documented answers to each of the six:

1. Normal operation: the actual supply arrangement, the interconnection configuration if any, the load profile, and delivery obligations.
2. Outages and maintenance: what serves the load when on-site generation is down, what fuel backs it up, whether the grid is involved, and whether those procedures have been tested.
3. Upgrades: any utility work required, and who pays under the governing tariff and agreements.
4. Underuse and cancellation: what protects other customers if anything is built in reliance on us and we use less or leave.
5. Curtailment: if we draw on the grid at any point, what the contractual right to curtail is, how it's been tested, and which loads are excluded.
6. Verification: what we report publicly after operation begins about metered load, outages, and compliance against commitments.

The accurate version of our claim is not "Savrn won't take community power." It's "Savrn is designed to meet its load behind the meter, and here are the documented answers to all six questions." If we can't produce those answers for a specific site, the community should treat our claim as unverified.

The behind-the-meter caution names other dependencies too: fuel supply and emissions. On-site generation needs fuel, and fuel moves on public infrastructure. On-site generation produces emissions into shared air. Those belong in our record, measured at the locations that matter to neighbors, as Section 10.10 describes.

10.12.2 Zero makeup water must pass the table's boundaries#

Our water goal touches two rows of the five-claim table directly.

"Closed loop." The minimum boundary is to identify initial fill, makeup, maintenance losses, blowdown if applicable, and heat-rejection method. A zero-makeup-water goal is a claim about one of those items. It still has to state the initial fill, how maintenance losses are handled, whether blowdown applies, and how the heat leaves the system. If the heat-rejection method consumed water, "closed loop" would be true of the loop and misleading about the facility. We have to show the whole path.

"No water cooling." The minimum boundary is to specify the cooling process and whether other facility water uses remain. Even a facility that uses no water for cooling has people, restrooms, cleaning, fire protection, and construction. Those uses have to be named, not assumed away.

And then LBNL's trade-off applies to us with full force. A design that reduces onsite water can raise electricity requirements, and electricity has its own water footprint depending on how it's generated. A zero-makeup-water goal is a direct-water commitment. It does not by itself answer the indirect-water question, and I won't let it be used to imply that it does. If we ever reported only the favorable number, you should hold us to the sentence I've already written: success declared by minimizing one reported number is not success.

Finally, "no impact on residents" is a claim I won't make from a cooling design. That row of the table requires local availability, quality, rate, and reliability evidence. A cooling specification is insufficient, including ours.

10.12.3 The other rows: jobs, taxes, noise, compact#

Our design claims are about power and water, but the chapter's other tests apply too. Job statements should separate construction peak, ongoing employees, ongoing contractors, and modeled supported jobs, and should disclose local-resident participation. Fiscal statements should put incentives on the same page as revenue and name which jurisdiction bears which cost. Noise records should include nighttime and testing conditions. And any community agreement we propose should contain all seven compact elements, including a remedy that lets an adverse result change what we do.

10.13 A Resident's Field Guide for the Public Hearing#

You don't need an engineering degree to ask good questions. You need the right questions and the right documents. Here's a field guide you can print and bring.

10.13.1 Questions to ask at the microphone#

Power - What serves this facility in normal operation, and is there any connection to the utility system? - What serves it during outages and maintenance? Is the grid the backup? - Who pays for any utility upgrades, and under which tariff? - If the facility uses less power than it reserved, or cancels, who pays for what was built? - Can the facility reduce its grid draw during emergencies, and has that been tested?

Water - Where does the water come from, and is it the same source that serves homes? - Is it potable or nonpotable? - How much is withdrawn, how much is consumed, and how much is discharged, and where? - What's the permitted amount, and will actual use be reported? - What happens in a drought? - If the claim is "closed loop," what are the initial fill, makeup, maintenance losses, blowdown, and heat-rejection method?

Jobs - What's the construction peak, and for how long? - How many ongoing employees and ongoing contractors? - How many are expected to be local residents, and how will that be reported?

Taxes - What incentives, abatements, or exemptions apply? - Which government gets the revenue, and which pays for roads, water, and services? - What happens to revenue as equipment depreciates, and if the facility closes early?

Noise, air, land - Where will sound be measured, and does that include nighttime and generator testing? - What backup generation is on site, how often is it tested, and what are the emissions at nearby homes? - What are the setbacks, drainage plans, and construction traffic routes?

Accountability - Is there a written agreement with a baseline, verification, and remedies? - Can residents challenge a measurement? - What happens if the project changes after approval, or closes?

10.13.2 Documents to request#

• The interconnection study or its public summary for the project.
• The governing tariff sheets and any executed service agreement terms that are public.
• Relevant utility commission orders and docket numbers.
• Water permits and any water supply agreements, with the source identified.
• The fiscal analysis presented to the county, including incentives and exemptions.
• The noise study, with measurement locations and operating modes.
• Air permits for on-site generation.
• The site plan with setbacks, drainage, and access.
• Any proposed community benefit agreement.

10.13.3 How to respond when you get a slogan#

When you hear "we won't take community power," "we use no water," or "this project brings 1,500 jobs," don't argue the slogan. Ask for the row. "Which of the six power questions does that answer, and where's the document?" "Is that direct or indirect water, and withdrawal or consumption?" "Is that construction peak or ongoing?" A calm request for the record is more powerful than any counterclaim, because it can't be dismissed as opinion.

10.13.4 What not to do#

Don't bring the national totals as proof about your county. Don't present the Virginia bill range as your future bill. Don't treat a missing document as proof of wrongdoing; treat it as a gap to be filled before a decision. And don't let anyone, developer or opponent, merge the application argument into the facility argument. Your meter, your water, your nights, and your taxes are enough of an agenda.

10.14 For County Commissioners and Utility Regulators#

You're the people who turn questions into conditions. That's a heavier job than asking.

10.14.1 For county commissioners#

• Put obligations in writing. Every power, water, noise, employment, tax, and reporting commitment you rely on in approval should appear in an enforceable document with a responsible entity and a deadline.
• Require a baseline before construction. Without it, you can't evaluate any later claim.
• Build the whole fiscal ledger. Revenue, incentives, infrastructure, services, depreciation, and closure costs, with the jurisdiction that bears each one. Run the delay, low-load, and early-closure scenarios.
• Separate job categories in the record. Construction peak, ongoing employees, ongoing contractors, and modeled supported jobs, plus local-resident participation.
• Condition change control. Material changes in load, cooling, generation, or ownership should trigger reassessment.
• Allocate end of life up front. Decommissioning and restoration obligations should be settled before operation.
• Keep your options open. On the record in front of you, you can approve, modify, defer, or reject. Deferral to obtain missing records is a legitimate decision.

10.14.2 For utility regulators#

• Separate present allocation from future risk. The Virginia audit shows both can be true at once. Examine whether the rules for new large loads protect other customers from growth-driven costs.
• Look at the risk-allocation tools. The AEP Ohio tariff documents minimum capacity ramps, term, collateral, exit obligations, and reimbursement before energization. Whether a similar structure fits your jurisdiction is your call, based on your own record.
• Test behind-the-meter claims. Ask what the grid provides during outages, what interconnection is required, and who pays for it.
• Make curtailment real. If flexibility is claimed, ask for contractual terms, tests, and excluded loads.
• Require post-operation verification. Metered load and outage reporting against commitments is how a commission learns whether its assumptions held.

10.14.3 A note on household conservation#

One boundary from Chapter 6 belongs here. Home energy report programs can change household electricity use through social-comparison feedback, but no household conservation program converts an unmeasured industrial obligation into a community benefit. Families should not be asked to offset an industrial load through conservation, and the two evidence chains do not substitute for each other in either direction.

10.15 How to Read a Data Center Announcement in Five Minutes#

Announcements come with big numbers. Here's a five-minute read that tells you what the announcement actually establishes.

Minute one: What stage is this? Is it an idea, a land purchase, a filed application, an approved permit, a signed utility agreement, construction, or operation? An announcement is not a project. A permit is not construction.

Minute two: What's the power number, and what kind is it? Is it a requested load, a contracted capacity, or a measured draw? Is it all behind the meter, all grid, or a mix? Does it mention backup?

Minute three: What's the water claim, and what's its boundary? "No water cooling," "closed loop," "reclaimed," "low intensity"? Run it against the five-row table. Is it direct only?

Minute four: What's the jobs and money claim? Is it construction peak, ongoing, or modeled supported jobs? Is the investment figure a dollar spent locally, or a headline capital commitment? Are incentives mentioned?

Minute five: What's enforceable? Is there any commitment with a deadline, a verification method, and a remedy? Or is it all "will" and "expects"?

At the end of five minutes, write one sentence: "This announcement establishes X and does not yet establish Y." That's the most useful sentence you can bring to a neighbor or a meeting.

10.16 How the Seven Savrn Trackers Fit#

The seven Savrn trackers organize relevant categories of public evidence about this infrastructure: capital commitments, documented delays, moratorium actions, water-related disclosures, grid-operator constraints, permits, and scarcity indicators. They do not replace local engineering, utility, environmental, employment, or fiscal records. Their own published scopes distinguish disclosures, documented status, permits, modeled indicators, and measurement boundaries, categories with different evidentiary weight that the trackers themselves do not collapse. (Capital Atlas, Delay Watchlist, Moratorium Tracker, Water Tracker, Grid Watchlist, Permits Tracker, Scarcity Tracker)

The rule is the same everywhere in this report: a tracker entry starts a question and never ends one. Chapter 11 states a forbidden inference for each tracker. The ones most relevant here:

• Capital Atlas: a dollar announced is not a dollar spent locally, a tax benefit to residents, a permanent job, or an investment return until the corresponding record shows it.
• Delay Watchlist: an entry does not prove failure, establish its cause, or predict permanent cancellation.
• Moratorium Tracker: a proposal is not law, a pause is not permanent, and a measure in one jurisdiction does not govern another.
• Water Tracker: a cooling figure does not prove zero total use, a permit does not equal actual consumption, and a regional total does not establish local household harm.
• Grid Operator Watchlist: queue position does not prove energization, statewide capacity does not prove local deliverability, and one tariff does not apply to every project.
• Permits Tracker: a permit does not equal construction, a load request does not equal contracted demand, and planned generation is not available capacity.
• Scarcity Tracker: a modeled index is not realized revenue, a liquid market price, a guaranteed financing basis, or proof that residents benefit.

A responsible public claim about a facility should be reproducible from original records and should identify its observation date, because these records change. And a missing record is an evidence gap, not proof of harmlessness and not proof of wrongdoing. The asymmetry matters in both directions: absence of a permit dispute does not certify a clean project, and absence of a clean audit does not prove malfeasance. Gaps stay gaps until someone fills them with records.

10.17 Conclusion: Real Numbers on Data Center Impact on Communities#

National energy and water research establishes the scale of the planning questions: 176 TWh and 4.4 percent of national electricity in 2023 as a model-based estimate, with 2028 scenarios running roughly 325 to 580 TWh; about 66 billion liters of direct water consumption with a much larger indirect footprint, and no completed national inventory. The Virginia audit and the Ohio tariff illustrate local effects and possible allocation mechanisms: a $14 to $37 modeled monthly bill range by 2040 under Dominion scenarios, a typical facility's 50 ongoing jobs beside its 1,500-person construction peak, material variation in local fiscal effects, and a contractual architecture for putting underuse risk on the large customer. None of these substitutes for the actual conditions of a proposed facility. (LBNL, JLARC, AEP Ohio)

Savrn's stated community objective becomes credible through measured, bounded, enforceable commitments: the compact of Section 10.11, tested against baselines, with remedies that bite. That includes our own behind-the-meter and zero-makeup-water goals, which stand as commitments until records verify them. The standard I propose is not to win an argument against residents. It's to make a project's benefits, burdens, alternatives, and obligations visible enough for a legitimate decision. That's the same standard Chapter 7 proposed for parks and drainage, applied here to the facilities this report's subject depends on. The application benefits and the facility effects stay separate. Both deserve real numbers.

10.18 Frequently Asked Questions#