- Utah's data center capacity will significantly increase with seven new projects set for completion by 2028.
- Challenges include water use and grid reliability, impacting community and environmental concerns.
- Data centers offer economic benefits, potentially boosting jobs in rural Utah areas by 2030.
SALT LAKE CITY — Utah is home to 48 operational data centers with over 920 megawatts of energy capacity.
But both figures will see a sharp uptick in the coming years, with seven under-construction data centers set to add 2,600 megawatts of capacity, including 1,700 megawatts behind-the-meter or off-grid by 2028.
"Data centers fuel our modern economy," Natalie Gochnour, director of the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute, said during a panel discussion Wednesday. "Investment in data centers is also driving stock market valuations, supporting innovations in artificial intelligence and promoting tech industry growth in Utah and around the nation and world."
With technology giants like Meta, Microsoft and Google and colocators driving the demand for data centers, Utah is far from the only place experiencing rapid data center development.
Of course, these massive developments come with benefits and challenges for the communities they inhabit.
Shon Hiatt, director of the Zage Business of Energy Initiative at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business, explained that the two most pressing challenges are water use and grid reliability.
"A lot of these data centers use evaporative cooling to cool their chips. So, unlike CPU (central processing unit) chips and racks that can be cooled primarily through air and fans, the GPUs (graphics processing units) that are used for AI use water cooling," Hiatt said.
He likened the cooling process to that of "a large swamp cooler" and explained that a 100 megawatt data center facility uses approximately 2 million liters of water a day — equivalent to the daily use of 6,500 households.
"Forty-three percent of these hyperscale and colocation facilities using this type of evaporative cooling are located in areas with extremely high water stress. So this is something we should probably think about," Hiatt said.
In Utah, nearly all operational and planned data centers are on the Wasatch Front, which the World Resources Institute classifies as having "high" baseline water stress.
For water-constrained states like Utah, liquid cooling methods that don't require evaporation are available, making them less water-intensive.
There's a tradeoff, though, as non-evaporative cooling methods require 16-18% more energy, Hiatt said.
This brings into focus another barrier that needs to be considered, Hiatt said: the reliability of the electrical grid, specifically its ability to keep up with the energy demands of data centers.
The National Electricity Reliability Corporation projects that Utah will face elevated grid risk in 2031, when electricity supply shortfalls could occur under extreme conditions "unless more power comes to the grid here," Hiatt said.
"In a place like Utah, where we're water-constrained, if we have more energy and more cost-efficient energy production, then we can have these types of facilities and use less water," said Rep. Paul Cutler, R-Centerville.
Hiatt also pointed to community opposition as a barrier, citing Data Center Watch showing the top concerns people have regarding data centers include noise and light pollution (51%), land use and preservation (43%) and water use (40%).
In March, the Provo City Council denied a proposed zoning ordinance change that would've opened the door for a new data center in Provo's East Bay neighborhood.
While the challenges related to data centers — and the concerns surrounding them — are plentiful, they also bring economic benefits to the communities they're positioned around, panelists explained.
"We have to communicate the benefits of building these data centers and the benefits to people and mitigate the negative aspects of these data centers; otherwise, we risk really negative things on the policy side," Cutler said.
For years, Cutler said, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and the Legislature have racked their collective brains to find ways to bring more jobs to rural parts of the state.
Data centers are a golden ticket to doing so, he thinks.
"This is a way to get more jobs and more economic development into rural areas. With the economics of AI changing, this means a rural area with cheaper power, cheaper land, and lots of land is more attractive for an AI data center. And guess what? When you build these AI data centers, you also bring other jobs — complementary jobs — to that neighborhood."
Hiatt added to this, saying data centers could be a "net positive property tax revenue driver for communities."
According to a Gardner Institute fact sheet, the U.S. data center pipeline expected to come online by 2030 will support an estimated 21,000-39,000 active construction jobs, transitioning to 42,000-67,000 permanent operations jobs.
In Utah, permanent operations jobs are projected to range from 2,000 to 3,250 by 2030.
"Our challenge is, can we generate power cost-effectively ... and can we communicate to the public and to everyday, average citizens, the benefits of adding this AI infrastructure to our communities?" Cutler said.
The full research brief can be found here.
