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Lots of proposals to build them near Lake Michigan recently but the residents of Wisconsin only want auto parts stores and paper mills. They've been completely demonized. Cities and counties are passing no data center laws even though it's the perfect place for it.

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Paper mills need a lot of heat energy to run the processes. Data centres produce a lot of heat. Sounds like a good combination?

Cold water -> data centre cooling loop - > warm water -> paper mill with heat pumps to transform low-grade heat into the required temperatures -> profit

Data center cooling system output has miserably low extractable energy.

I can't believe any town would vote for a paper mill. It smells like a paper mill.

Well, they do provide jobs and tend to stay around for a while given the large investments needed to establish one. There is a big one about 15 km from where I live, it smells about the same as a wastewater treatment plant. There was one close to where I lived while in university as well (another era, another country) which mostly smelled of warm paper, no bad smells. All in all there are worse industries to have around.

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