Accountability to the public is the first of many pressing issues concerning data centers in West Texas, according to comments made by Texas Tech Chancellor Brandon Creighton and others Friday in a forum hosted by the Lubbock Chamber of Commerce.
“The answers have to be clear,” Creighton said.
A recent data center project in northeast Lubbock was put on hold this year amid concerns raised by residents in a Planning and Zoning meeting.
Construction started last month for Project Caprock, a 313-acre data center just outside of Abernathy. Work continues on a data center project in Dickens County that, when finished, is estimated to have a $3.5 billion value.
“Texans are very smart individuals. They’re battle tested. So much of this is demanding accountability for making the right decisions,” Creighton said at the forum hosted on the Club Level of Jones AT&T Stadium at Texas Tech.
Panelists included Chris Matos, strategic negotiator for Google; George P. Bush, former Texas land commissioner and John Osborne, Lubbock Economic Development Alliance CEO. Matthew Watkins, Texas Tribune editor-in-chief moderated.
Click here or use the video player to watch event.
“So we should acknowledge that there are a lot of strong feelings about data centers in both directions, right?” Watkins said.
Later in the forum, he asked a question submitted from the audience, “What is Google doing to combat misinformation [on data centers and A.I.]?”
Matos answered, “Ironically, the Internet is not the best place for this. It’s engagements like this. … Meeting people in person, giving the opportunity for question and answers such as this and also panels informed to engage with people directly is our next solution.”
“We take ownership for the lack of transparency in the past,” Matos added.
More discussion is on the way, Creighton said.
For example, the Legislature will hold months of hearings on data centers and related issues in the next year’s session, he said.
“Decision makers will be held responsible for making the best decisions for this state – our natural resources,” said Creighton, who stepped down from the Texas Senate to become chancellor less than a year ago.
“I think what the public concern is tied to is risk versus reward and just making sure that the public is safeguarded, that our natural resources are safeguarded and that – as you all are doing – you’re getting the information out in our communities,” Creighton said.
Data center skeptics
Steven Sanders, former candidate for Lubbock mayor, spoke on behalf of half a dozen or so protesters outside the event.
“Where they chose to try to do it at the first time in Northeast Lubbock was terrible because that part of the city needs rooftops,” Sanders said.
A City Council vote or Planning and Zoning Commission vote is not enough for such an important issue, he said and also advocating for an 18-month moratorium on any data center proposal in Lubbock.
“These are our resources we’re talking about. This isn’t an ordinance for whether or not kids can stay at the park ’til 12 o’clock at night. This is our water and our electricity we’re talking about. And this will affect people’s incomes and people’s bills. This is going to affect all of that,” Sanders said.
“We’re not saying we’re against data. We’re saying we don’t want one here in our city. … If they want to do a data center, there’s plenty of other places in Texas.” Sanders added.
In the May mayoral and City Council races, LubbockLights.com put questionnaires to candidates with four of them outright opposed, three others expressing a high level of caution and only one making an outright statement of support.
Tina and Mark Amezquita, who live in south-central Lubbock, attended the forum and still have concerns.
“There’s a lot of information that was talked about, but it was very vague. And so, we need to know more details,” she said, adding there was too much “beat around the bush.”
Her husband said there’s talk of using nuclear power on sites. Fermi, northeast of Amarillo, is the only West Texas project that’s announced a plan for nuclear power.
“We have to weigh the resources, the cost, the impact to the environment,” he said, adding people need to know if such plans are sustainable.
She was concerned there are already too many data centers. According to cloudscene.com, the United States has more than 5,400 of them.
“How many more do we need?” she said.
China and national security
The panelists made their case as to why more data centers are needed.
“We’re 27 days ahead of China on AI. We’re 27 years behind China on nuclear [power],” Creighton said.
Bush, also a former intelligence officer, said, “We need the AI models to be underpinned and backed by Western civilizational values – that we uphold and hold dear – rather than a Chinese state-controlled model.”
Data centers drive A.I. or artificial intelligence, allowing a nation to better protect its digital network. Falling behind is bad. For example, Bush said Chinese actors were “accessing President Trump’s phone” during the previous election cycle – a reference to the cyber espionage group called Salt Typhoon.
Osborne said it’s better that data centers are in the United States instead of another country.
“If that data center is controlled in a foreign area that all of a sudden becomes an adversary of the United States, there’s the danger of it being turned off,” Osborne said.
Safeguarding water supply
Protesters mentioned water use as one of their top concerns.
As one example – officials with Fermi said their data center currently under construction on Texas Tech property near Amarillo, will probably use about 2.5 million gallons of water per day. The water is used to cool down large computers.
But different data centers use different systems. Osborne said an open-loop water cooling system is simply not acceptable in Lubbock where water is scarce. The open-loop system dumps the water out into the environment after it’s used for cooling.
A closed-loop water cooling system is different, he said. The water is recycled and used over and over.
Matos said, “It’s like a car radiator. I don’t know how many times you all have refilled fluid in your car radiator, but excepting a leak or a major failure, it pretty much stays full the entire time.”
Creighton said Texas has two-billion-acre feet of brackish water underground that’s too salty for safe human consumption. But it can be used in a cooling system.
“The brackish water could be an outer loop to help fresh water on an inner loop,” Creighton said.
And data center companies might need to desalinate their own water on site, Creighton said, but brackish water is not something the public would ordinarily use as a resource.
‘Yes’ is not guaranteed
Osborne said data centers have been in Texas for years and he worked on them for economic development early in his career in the early 2000s.
“Data centers … have been around for a very, very long time,” Osborne said. But he acknowledged they are different than they used to be – using more power than ever.
Any economic development project – data center or otherwise – must be right for Lubbock. Otherwise, LEDA will not support it, Osborne said.
“There’s been over a dozen prospects that total roughly $25 billion if they all came, roughly 9,000 to 10,000 jobs if they all came – that we have not gone after because they use too much water,” Osborne said.
Discussing regulations
There was also talk of legislative proposals likely to come up for counties to get more authority to regulate data centers.
Until then, Osborne said LEDA tries to convince big projects to come into the city – not the county.
“One of our efforts is as much as possible to have these locate in the city limits of Lubbock so that we can ensure that they can be … at least regulated in the way that is a benefit to both the company and also to the community,” Osborne said.
There will likely be legislative debate over reporting requirements on electric and water usage, Bush said.
“An acronym you’re going to hear a lot of in the coming years is what is known as a CBA, so a community benefit agreement,” Bush said.
Communities need to have agreements in place before offering tax abatements or other incentives, Bush claimed.
Creating, killing jobs
Matos said, “We estimate that for every one Google job, there are nine supporting jobs within a community that are related to either the data center operations or supporting the surrounding economic system.”
Everyone on the panel acknowledge that AI and data centers will both create jobs and kill jobs. The centers need employees. But some companies will then use AI to do work that used to be done by humans.
