00:00Protesters were cleared from Memphis City Hall as the council delayed a pause on new data centers.
00:06In Ohio, a developer is suing a town over a billion-dollar campus, and Google just committed to hundreds of
00:14megawatts of new nuclear power.
00:18Memphis City Hall turned into a battleground over a proposed pause on new data centers.
00:24On Tuesday, October 6, the city council voted 7-5 to delay a vote on a 12-month moratorium until
00:33October 20.
00:36Protesters chanted this is our city inside the chamber.
00:39Police moved to clear the room, and a fight between two women broke out in the lobby, though no one
00:46was detained or injured.
00:47Councilman J.B. Smiley Jr., the lead sponsor, wants a year to study the effects on health, power, water, and
00:57infrastructure.
00:58Pointing to resident concerns about Elon Musk's Colossus facilities,
01:03Councilman Jeff Warren warned that a pause could push companies into nearby counties.
01:09And Mayor Paul Young wants more rules while noting the tax revenue.
01:14For now, the decision waits.
01:17That opposition is now making its way into courtrooms.
01:21And in Ohio, a developer is suing the town that turned it away.
01:26Thor Equities filed a federal lawsuit in the Southern District of Ohio against the city of Urbana,
01:33its council, and its zoning appeals board over a $1 billion data center campus.
01:39Thor says it spent $19.6 million of its own money and worked with city officials for more than a
01:47year.
01:47Submitting a complete site plan in February.
01:51Urbana then passed a 12-month emergency moratorium in March and in June.
01:57Rezone Thor's roughly 230 acres is unsuitable for data centers.
02:03Thor argues the moratorium rested on wildly exaggerated claims about water usage and noise.
02:09And notes its design uses closed-loop cooling.
02:13The case could test how far cities can go.
02:18And the reason these fights keep escalating comes down to one thing.
02:22Power.
02:23On October 6, Google and Constellation Energy announced a 20-year agreement to bring 890
02:30megawatts of new nuclear capacity to the PJM grid.
02:35Delivered through upgrades at 11 existing Constellation nuclear units across six sites in
02:41Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, Constellation will invest more than $4.3 billion,
02:49with the first uprate expected by 2028.
02:53And the companies say the work sustains about 4,400 existing jobs and creates roughly
02:597,200 construction jobs.
03:02A separate 15-year agreement covers another 2,700 megawatts from the PJM fleet.
03:10Alongside a five-year technology alliance involving Google Cloud, it is a sign that the biggest
03:16buyers are now paying to expand supply themselves.
03:21The pressure on the grid is only half the story.
03:24Because water tells the other half.
03:27In Henderson County, Texas, residents are fighting a proposed data center.
03:32that would draw on Cedar Creek Lake, the reservoir that supplies most of Fort Worth's drinking
03:38water.
03:39Records show Kansas-based Diode Ventures told the local utility district it could need one
03:45to five million gallons a day for cooling.
03:49The utility said it lacked the capacity.
03:52And in May its board suspended new high-intensity water commitments through April 1, 2027.
03:59The Tarrant Regional Water District already pulls up to 170 million gallons a day
04:05from the lake, and a group called Save Cedar Creek is pushing back, with Texas lawmakers expected
04:13to take up data centers and tax exemptions.
04:16This fight is far from over.
04:20State legislators are not the only ones taking notice.
04:24And in Loudoun County, Virginia, home to data center alley, a push to slow the industry just
04:31collapsed.
04:32On October 6, supervisors voted 7-2 to table indefinitely a proposal from Laura Tekroni and
04:40Julie Briskman that would have immediately ended grandfathering protections for pending data
04:46center applications.
04:48County staff warned that revoking those protections adopted in 2025 would likely lead to litigation
04:56costing as much as $60 million.
04:59A follow-up motion to spend $200,000 on an independent audit of the grandfathered applications, with a
05:08report due by April 2027, was tabled as well.
05:12The protections remain in effect until their sunset on February 12, 2028, so applications
05:20keep moving.
05:22Elsewhere, local governments are acting before the bulldozers even arrive.
05:27In eastern North Carolina, both four county commissioners voted 6-1 on Monday, October 5, for
05:35a one-year moratorium on data center development.
05:38During the pause, the county will not accept, process, or approve applications to establish,
05:46build, expand, or operate a data center.
05:50And notably, no data center is currently proposed there.
05:55Commissioner Hood Richardson cast the loan no vote, arguing the facilities could lower taxes
06:01by 10% and that electricity availability would already limit where one could go.
06:07Also, Commissioner Stan Detheridge said he expects a year-long pause but does not want to close
06:12the door, urging the county to write a strong ordinance addressing noise and electricity.
06:18One resident said the county needs a year or two to understand the effects.
06:25Yet despite that wave of local resistance, construction is pressing forward in places that welcome it.
06:32Amazon Web Services has filed a preliminary land development plan for 36 data center
06:38buildings at the Homer City Energy Campus in Indiana County, Pennsylvania, about 50 miles
06:46east of Pittsburgh.
06:47Each building would stand two stories and hold about 225,000 square feet, spread across 1100 acres
06:56on the site of a former 2-gigawatt coal plant.
06:59A 4.5-gigawatt natural gas plant under construction would power most of the campus.
07:06With more than 1-gigawatt flowing back to the grid, the plan calls for four phases starting in December.
07:13With completion targeted for June 2036 and an estimated 1,500 to 2,000 jobs,
07:21Amazon has pledged about $20 billion across Pennsylvania, and the financial commitment
07:28behind that construction is staggering, even at smaller scale.
07:33Hyperscale Data says it has signed a master services agreement covering 20 megawatts of
07:39critical AI compute at its Michigan campus in Dowajac, with a 10-year term and two five-year
07:46extension options.
07:47If both extensions are exercised, revenue could exceed $1.2 billion.
07:54The company has invested more than $70 million in the Alliance cloud services business, and
08:01the Michigan facility shut down Bitcoin mining there on September 1st, and is targeting operations
08:08in November.
08:09It also holds a right of first offer on another 32 megawatts, and says the campus could ultimately
08:16support more than 300 megawatts, subject to financing, utility agreements, and approvals.
08:24Meanwhile, it plans to move its Montana data center and mining equipment into a new subsidiary.
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