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Comment by lordgilman | Hacker News Reader

I suspect the authors of this paper would like to hear out your evidence for increasing energy prices https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.19777

In the United States at least there's been plenty of polling on why people oppose data centers. Consistently, it's water usage and water contamination fears, which is exactly what you see most often in social media and discussed online. I think a lot of high-minded rationalizations are just trying to dodge the embarrassing fact that people simply think data centers are draining municipal and natural water sources.

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2015 to 2024...?

Monthly private spending on data center construction:

2015: $168 million

2024: $1.59 billion

10x increase over 9 years (26% annual growth rate)

2026: $4.36 billion

3x increase over 2 years (73% annual growth rate)

Let me reiterate: MONTHLY spending.

Compound this with presumably we've gotten better and not worse at building data centers (if nothing else, just building larger data centers would create economies of scale), the construction dollar to power consumption ratio has probably moved in the wrong direction for your argument.

The 2015 - 2024 growth curve would conceivably encourage more consistent usage of baseload and, where insufficient, gradual construction of additional supply. That would have the expected effect as seen in the paper.

The latter growth (which is obviously accelerating), especially after an extended period of the former growth, would not necessarily do this. We in fact know this to be true because the rate-limiting step on data center construction is lack of energy.

So obviously there is not ample excess baseload just sitting around. Obviously it's non-trivial to add additional capacity at the speed data centers need it.

You misunderstood I think. They aren't arguing water is a bigger problem than energy. They are arguing that negative perception is mostly focused around water use.

They suggested (and linked to paper arguing) that data centers are not causing energy prices to go up.

I am saying the paper's scope of analysis (up to 2024) renders it pretty much irrelevant.

And that's very suspicious given that they published the paper in 2026. Was it somehow impossible to find energy prices for 25+26?

No, it's not suspicious at all!

The paper was posted on the 18th of June. I would guess that means they started writing the first draft in the winter of 2026, if not earlier. 2026 data obviously wouldn't be available then, or even now---we're only in September!

In fact, most data products take a few months to compile and distribute. The US will release its Q2 estimate of GDP at the end of September, for example; Statistics Canada is on a pretty similar schedule. Thus, 2025 data might not have been available when they started writing either. It's certainly possible to estimate things on your own, but now you need to show that a) your method of estimating GDP (energy prices, whatever) is valid and b) any effects you see aren't simply due to using different metrics.

In short, it just takes a while to do and write up research.

What exactly are you getting at? Datacenters do use potable water from municipal sources for evaporative cooling. Are you claiming that's not true?

Here's a recent source: https://pacinst.org/publication/how-much-water-do-data-cente...

They do use water, and the numbers look very large which makes for big scary headlines. However people who actually know how water is used in a city are used to numbers much larger than that.

it's the demand delta, not the total demand, that's concerning. Also not all use cases are created equal: using water to keep people alive is legitimate and using water to build a machine that can automatically almost count the number of vowels in a sentence is not legitimate, especially when that usage drives up demand and makes it harder to use water to keep people alive.

Why do you get to choose what is and isn’t legitimate?

Well "you" don't "get to", but this is precisely why we made the concept "states" and use "state power" to counteract other natural modalities of power.

Which is being demonstrated by the use of state power to kill data center development.

Yeah but it's all Chinese propaganda so it doesn't count this time. /s

Because the water system is a public utility funded by the people who live within the community?

Little Red hen, why do you get to choose who get's to eat your bread?

there's a really special type of crowd to whom you can say "People staying alive is good" and their response is "SOURCE??!!!"

What are you trying to achieve by posting comments like this? You're not trying to have a discussion at all.

golf courses use much more. But you don’t see massive resistance against new golf courses being planned.

Farms use an order of magnitude more than either. You don’t see any demands whatsoever on agriculture to reduce water usage.

Sure. Those should be addressed, too.

The difference is they already exist while the datacenters don't. And its a lot easier, in a democracy, to stop a thing from being built in the first place than to tear it down after the fact, what with pesky laws about private property and so forth.

Or are you really saying that if we can't solve all water usage problems then we shouldn't solve or prevent any? Is that what you're suggesting?

What an aggressive way to interact with people. Do you need a nap? Do you?

Instead of replying to your rather silly question I’ll just point to this sibling which I’ll co-sign: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49568295

It is deeply funny to me that my asking a rhetorical question and using a little italics triggered you while "So, you can scream fake news all you want, but..." earned not a single complaint.

Perhaps I just struck a nerve.

Ok. For the avoidance of doubt, that is not what I was suggesting.

I would expect that a golf course construction is relatively rare event. And there is definitely no explosion of new golf courses. Total DC power consumption growth is practically exponential for the last 5 years.

>I would expect that a golf course construction is relatively rare event

That's just status quo bias, given that they're an ongoing source of water consumption. "oh it doesn't matter that [thing] is guzzling water, because it's already there!".

Exactly right. It's a lot easier to prevent an asshat venture than it is to dismantle it. Now that the public is aware, I wouldn't be surprised if new golf courses start getting the same treatment.

They haven’t been. I’m aware of new golf courses being planned in my area and I hear nothing but enthusiasm. Literally no one brings up water consumption as a concern.

This whole thing is a sublimation of vaguer anxieties about AI (which are perfectly rational!) into areas where people feel like they can make more concrete objections that are likelier to succeed. The water thing is completely fake, whether people think so or not.

Not entirely. Lack of regulations mean recycled water facilities can end up being consumption facilities with pollution risk. Also Meta plans to restore as much water as they use by 2030. Which, seems like a while to break even. That's primarily because ai data centers require a lot more cooling water and power than traditional ones. So, you can scream fake news all you want, but it is a concern and it is a good way to oppose ai in general. And power consumption, noise pollution, and pollution are also serious issues. "Whatabout this worse thing" is a pretty terrible argument. You can whatabout anything, but it doesn't make that thing any less bad. aka two wrongs don't make a right.

It’s not just whataboutism, it’s pointing out that the people up in arms about data center water usage don’t even know about the long list of things that use way more water than data centers, and when told, they don’t care.

I think it’s pretty reasonable to conclude that their beef is not really with water usage as much as a general hatred of AI, big tech, etc, and water usage is an easy thing to focus on.

golf courses don't contaminate the water supply. Amazon was just forced to settled a lawsuit for 20 million because they took a community's water supply and made it undrinkable. Now they'll be paying to improve public water treatment infrastructure and dig deeper wells looking for cleaner water. When's the last time a golf course had to do that?

Yeah, it’s one thing when SV runs the Uber script (ignoring the law to build big enough to buy politicians) to hurt cab drivers. It’s very different when it’s your neighborhood.

Why and how would they contaminate the water supply though? Sounds like a municipality problem, a water consumer shouldn't be feeding back into the system, or is it being caused by poorly executed construction practices? Maybe when they first pipe in or something is being left open during construction, this seems like it shouldn't happen if things are being done properly, water supply systems are not a new technology so who is dropping the ball?

Yeah, all these stupid little municipalities have to do is shit they've literally never had to do before while getting sued out of their socks by literal trillion dollar companies.

That's all it takes for them to do their part in generating gargantuan amounts of value for people who live 1,000 miles away and their uberwealthy hardly-human CEOs and investors.

what is it that they have to do? I'm still confused as to what is causing the water to change

Have you considered Googling? Or is this the type of curiosity that one just offloads to others?

https://fieldreport.caes.uga.edu/publications/TP121/how-data...

it's social media, and a human who strongly signals they know something is usually much more reliable than a search engine for knowing the real upshot, 9 times out of 10 the person who already has a strong opinion has keyed in on the detail that even if I found a search result might not be so easy to decipher, or you could have some professional experience, anyways it was worth a shot, thanks for sharing

In the case of one amazon data center the town already had nitrates in their water due to agricultural runoff, but at levels that weren't a problem. Amazon took in hundreds of millions of gallons of that water for cooling, which evaporated away some of the water, but left the nitrates. Then amazon dumped the concentrated nitrate 'waste water' at such high volumes that it was pushed so deep into ground that it reached the aquifer contaminating the source for some 45k people. Soon people's taps were delivering water contaminated at 10x the legal limit. People got sick. A bunch of parents lost their babies.

Amazon was forced to settle for 20 million which will pay for digging to find uncontaminated water sources deeper in the ground. They'll also pay for water treatments to help remove the excess nitrates.

Data centers don't have to bring in new toxins and pollutants. They can also make existing problems much much worse.

This doesn't even make any sense. "deeper in the ground" is mostly wishful thinking. Why wouldn't the contamination spread? How can anyone be sure there is even potable water deeper?

With regular rainfall/usage the nitrates don't get far enough down to reach the aquifer. The nitrates get filtered naturally and remain in upper layers of the soil. Amazon concentrated the contamination and drove it far enough down that it reached and contaminated the aquifer, but below that the father down you dig and pull up water the less contaminated it will be. Part of the settlement is a fund for digging new private wells deep enough that the water contamination is under legal limits. I guess if there's no clean water below the contamination they'll have to stop using wells entirely and depend on treated water from the contaminated source.

> Why and how would they contaminate the water supply though?

One recent-ish example: ^[1]

> ... or is it being caused by poorly executed construction practices?

I believe their contractor was responsible for this one IIRC?

[1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/victoriaforster/2026/07/09/meta...

The construction itself absolutely alters local watersheds:

1. Replacing forests and fields with concrete buildings prevents rainwater from filtering into the soil, which stops local aquifers from recharging.

2. During storms the rain runs off impervious surfaces and can cause downstream flooding.

3. Heavy land grading washes loose sediment into nearby waterways, destroying aquatic habitats and turning private drinking wells muddy. (That especially gets local homeowners angry and gets lots of video views).

And then you have the ongoing operation of open cooling systems:

4. Evaporative cooling systems discharge concentrated mineral brine that spikes the salinity of freshwater ecosystems.

5. Cooling water is treated with toxic biocides and anti-scalants that can contaminate local water basins. It can also contain leached copper, zinc, and PFAS.

6. Discharging warm wastewater depletes oxygen in streams and alters the overall ecology.

Of course all of these issues could be mitigated to a reasonable degree with proper care and effort:

>this seems like it shouldn't happen if things are being done properly

Do you want to bet your whole town on things being done properly right now?

All of this applies to all construction of all types. There are already plenty of environmental regulations around buildings and their construction. Maybe these aren't being enforced, maybe the laws need to be stricter. I'm not an expert but it sounds plausible. But if that's the case, we have to fix those problems otherwise you're just playing whack-a-mole with development. When you specifically focus on datacenters and stopping datacenters it gives away that environmentalism is just a fig leaf for your actual goals.

It seems like many of these town council debates are citizens asking for the laws to be enforced.

The first three apply to any construction project with a paved surface and there are ways to mitigate that, you can collect the runoff in a cistern/tank that filters back into the groundwater or collect it in a retention pond which does the same thing.

Items 4 and 5 apply to any facility with cooling towers, not limited to but including hospitals, apartment buildings, schools, prisons, cold storage warehouses, combined cycle power plants, large commercial buildings, paper plants, retirement homes, commercial bakeries, industrial facilities with heat rejection needs, etc.

The sixth one applies to virtually every power plant in existence.

Yes, and...? Data centers are the large projects being built right now. Often in communities with no prior experience with projects of such scale.

I don't doubt that politics plays a role, but we also can't deny that the current moment is a different category.

how would this mess with a water supply though, or are we talking the private wells? with a private well though it's something you want to mitigate either way, filters, etc, granted I have only seen the handful of clips where someone is showing dirty water coming out of the tap and I am trying to trace the chain of responsibility for the water supply, thanks for the detailed response btw

My county, for example, only processes surface water. If someone altered our upstream collection or polluted the reservoir, it would be a very big deal.

For private wells: if you're a rural person who previously had perfectly fine water, and now someone comes along to mess with that, even if it "just" requires installing expensive new equipment, you're going to be pissed.

>The construction itself absolutely alters local watersheds:

The first 3 apply to all construction. It's just being selectively applied because people hate datacenters.

My understanding is that they don't but there's a measurable amount of the population that thinks they can.

Some do, some use closed-loop systems that are essentially 'charge once'. higher energy use, but less water

Not sure why this is getting downvoted, most of the new facilities (e.g. Stargate) are running closed loop systems. PUE goes up a bit if you have to use chillers, but ultimately it's faster/easier to build a large facility in a closed loop fashion than get water (permitting, treatment, etc.). NVIDIA pushing 45C inlet temps is to allow facilities to run dry coolers instead of chillers and make this even easier! Two phase cooling (required above ~3kW TDP) would eliminate water use in the secondary loop (if not the primary, eventually).

>your evidence for increasing energy prices

it's my power bill, dude. and everyone else's around me. your paper stops measuring that data right at the time when everyone's bills started increasing sharply.

There's a global market for energy. What you see at the pump translates into electricity prices in a slow and grinding process. Remember that most of our electricity is not generated from renewable sources! Three years ago Russia invaded Ukraine, that pushed up fuel prices and electricity prices have followed. Now, we have the Iran war and that will push up electricity prices even more. The issue here is that you do not understand these markets.

The effects of Russian War had normalized by 2024. Or the paper would have shown an increase in Electricity tariffs.

And the effects of Iran War are not apparent.

I would recommend reading the actual paper where it acknowledges that it does not regard capacity payments.

https://www.energyknowledgebase.com/post/capacity-payment

I was asked for evidence that energy prices have increased. I provided that. Now you're shifting the goalposts to ask for evidence that the increase in energy prices is solely due to data center demand, pretending you've proven that an increase in demand somehow didn't lead to an increase in prices, then retreating to "you don't understand markets" as a vague defense of your idea that increased demand doesn't drive prices up.

There is a methodical issue with that study that the authors acknowledge.

> How can higher demand lead to lower prices? … a bump in demand can allow for higher utilization of the existing generation … Provided the bump does not violate capacity constraints

I.e. data centers reduce electricity prices, as long as you don’t build new generation to support them. Whereas data centers, nationally are projected to increase energy use between 325 to 580 TWh annually by 2028 [1]. There is no way you are going to meet that without building new generation assets to meet that demand.

[1] https://www.energy.gov/articles/doe-releases-new-report-eval...

> In the United States at least there's been plenty of polling on why people oppose data centers. Consistently, it's water usage and water contamination fears,

where I am the water is a part of it, but a big issue is electricity prices going up (which they will)

Well I don't have the data in front of me, but building power capacity leads to higher capacity payments, which are passed to all consumers. This has been an global industry standard for decades at far as I know.

The study's authors acknowledge it in the text.

> We estimate that data centers caused average retail electricity rates to fall modestly in the United States from 2015 to 2024 using an instrumental variables approach.

This is a good primer on capacity payments: https://www.energyknowledgebase.com/post/capacity-payment

People should stop citing that paper. It makes the opposite point they think it makes. I think most people just read the first couple of sentences in the abstract.

"We estimate that data centers caused average retail electricity rates to fall modestly in the United States from 2015 to 2024 using an instrumental variables approach."

But the data center backlash really started 2 years ago. It's 2026 now. Getting new energy generation built and approved takes time.

"We caution that future supply constraints could reverse the effect."

There it is.

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