100% Agree @GavinSBaker. Now, I’m going to debunk every single piece of mis-information about data centers that I’ve ever seen online:

DISINFORMATION: Data centers use a lot of water.

FACT: Most AI data centers are closed loop dry cooler design that barely consume any water at all. A 20MW 10,000 GPU cluster needs 20,000 gallons to charge and doesn’t use material water after that. That’s less than 1/4 of the amount of water used to raise the amount of beef the average American consumes in a year. That means one of the largest data centers in the world, at 2GW, consumes less water than 20 people’s annual beef consumption or three American’s total water footprint (@ ~600k gallons per year for the average American).

DISINFORMATION: Data centers increase electricity prices.

FACT: Data centers bring down a community’s average electricity bill because they spur development of new power generation. Most data centers bring their own power generation, pay fees to the utility to build more power plants, or bring their own power storage to actually reduce the cost of energy in their community. Northern Virginia has some of the most data centers per capita and has low power costs. See research from the Electric Power Research Institute https://marketplace.org/story/2026/07/10/data-centers-lowered-electric-bills-in-some-places-for-now… and https://arxiv.org/pdf/2606.19777.

DISINFORMATION: Data centers don’t create jobs

FACT: Data centers create hundreds of jobs at construction and a high number of exceptionally high paying jobs (many over $120k/year) for their ongoing operation and maintenance. No, they’re not similar to an automotive plant in terms of the jobs / MW but they are phenomenal additions to an industrial park and community.

DISINFORMATION: Data centers are constantly super noisy

FACT: Data centers are one of the quietest industrial buildings in the world. Drive by a data center in your city and roll down your window. They are very quiet. In fact, a metal mill is FAR louder than a data center—up to 10,000,000 more sound energy is produced by a mill and perceptually a mill can be 128x louder than a data center.

DISINFORMATION: Data centers emit noise pollution from diesel engines running all the time.

FACT: Emergency generator sets are almost never turned on unless the grid connection goes out. This would be less than 0.5% of the time!

DISINFORMATION: Data centers are surveillance systems

FACT: Data centers actually just host computers owned by private companies that are used to make phone calls, access the internet, run ChatGPT, Claude, X, Instagram, Facebook, Google, play multiplayer video games, and every thing you ever do online. That’s it.

DISINFORMATION: Data centers make water dirty

FACT: AOC held up a bottle of dirty water and said this is what data centers do. Completely false, well water disruption is a rare side effect of EVERY construction site in the history of humanity. This is not at all unique to data centers and is a complete red herring.

DISINFORMATION: Data centers get massive tax breaks and drain tax dollars from towns

FACT: Data centers pay massive amounts of tax and often times huge % of an annual budget of a county or town! It’s an absolute bonanza for the towns that are lucky enough to welcome a data center. New schools, new roads, new services are all paid for. Even if there is a sales tax rebate we’re still talking tens of millions of new tax revenue. In 2022, Virginia’s data centers collectively generated $1 billion in local tax revenue and $640 million in state tax revenue! That was 2022. https://netchoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Kentucky-Statewide-Data-Center-Report_8.11.26.pdf…

Feel free to reply here if you have any other question you’d like answered about data centers happy to provide actual facts.

Data centers lowered electric bills in some places — for now

Source: https://www.marketplace.org/story/2026/07/10/data-centers-lowered-electric-bills-in-some-places-for-now Two-thirds of Americans think new data centers will increase electricity costs, according toa Harvardpoll conducted last year. There’s a logic to that belief: Data centers use tons of power, and average electricity priceshave risen 39% nationallyover the past five years, according to economic data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But arecent studyfrom the Electric Power Research Institute, a non-profit research organization funded by government, academia, utilities, and the private sector, finds that new data centers weren’t the main cause of that increase. Replacing aging grid infrastructure, recovering from natural disasters like wildfires and hurricanes, and fluctuating natural gas prices drove electricity prices higher, according toadditional researchfrom the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and The Brattle Group.

In fact, facilities powering AI and other digital platforms put downward pressure on electricity prices. But asdata centers continue to grow, that trend may be starting to reverse.

To explain how a power-hungry data center can actually lower electricity prices, we’ll use an analogy: Say you’re throwing a party, and you’re buying a big spread of food for your guests. You ask each of your guests to chip in an equal amount for their share of the food.

“You know that your buffet is going to cost you $1,000, let’s say, and if you have 10 people show up, your cost is much higher per person,” said Robin Millican, director of research programs and strategic partnerships at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.

That comes out to $100 each, a pretty pricey buffet. But then, you find out your cousin and four of her friends are in town. They want to come to the party, too. That’s five more guests, and they’ll pay their share. So, the price of that buffet goes down for everybody, to $66 per person.

To translate this to power prices and data centers, the “buffet” is the fixed cost of running the power grid: Building and maintaining all the power plants, poles, wires, and substations. The guests are electricity consumers. Your cousin and her friends are a new data center hooking up to the grid.

“You’re taking the fixed costs of managing the grid, and you’re able to essentially have more customers pay for those fixed costs,” Millican said.

This is partly how data centers pushed down electricity prices in recent years, according to the EPRI study: They helped spread out those fixed costs of providing electricity to more customers.

“Average residential retail rates in the average state would have been about 6% higher without the data centers built from 2019 to 2024,” said Asa Watten, a researcher at EPRI and the co-author of the study.

One big caveat there: It’s a nationalaverage. In certain states with ample power supply, adding data centers has lowered electric bills, said Ryan Hledik, a principal at the consulting firm The Brattle Group,where he’s also studied this issue.

“Those states that have experienced those price decreases are states that already had room on their power grid to accommodate these new customers without needing to go out and make big investments in new infrastructure,” Hledik said.

He pointed to North Dakota as a good example. It had an excess supply of electricity from coal, natural gas, and wind. Bringing in large industrial customers, including data centers, lowered prices for residential customers from 2019 to 2024.

But in other regions that don’t have much excess power, data centers have started to have the opposite effect.

“If it’s a utility or a system or a market that doesn’t have that headroom, then it is possible that the data center is going to drive up electricity prices,” Hledik said.

This iswhat’s starting to happenin the mid-Atlantic and parts of the Midwest, overseen by the grid operator PJM, Hledik said.

“Demand has risen quickly, and there isn’t enough generation capacity that’s available to keep up with that demand,” he said.

That’s driving up costs for everyone.

To return to that buffet analogy, say the party is underway and your guests have eaten most of the food. But then, another group of your friends shows up. They’re hungry. So, you have to go out and buy extra food for them, and all of your guests end up paying more.

This is what utilities and policymakers are now grappling with as more data centers push up electricity demand. One way regulators are trying to handle the issue: By charging data centers a higher rate for electricity.

“Essentially, state regulators are setting a different class of rates for data centers to have them bear the costs of things like new transmission lines, new substations that are required in order to serve their new demand,” said Millican.

Historically, she said, regulators have granted big industrial customers lower electricity rates than households as a way to incentivize economic growth. But in many regions, that policy might not make sense anymore.

Gavin Baker (@GavinSBaker): Data centers are awesome for America in every way.