Push has come to shove in American politics, and that famous location turns out to be somewhere down on the Coweta County line.
When the Coweta County Board of Commissioners approved a rezoning request for a 320-acre data center in April, there was a heated response not only from Coweta residents but from the South Fulton town of Palmetto, which sits across the county line almost directly adjacent to Project Peach, as the $1 billion enterprise is called.
Hard on the heels of that 3-2 vote, plans were announced for Project Sail, another proposed data center valued at an astonishing $17 billion. With a petition drive against Project Sail picking up support, the board last week unanimously voted to declare a 180-day moratorium on data center development in order “to gather input from stakeholders, study how other counties are managing this issue and develop a well-informed ordinance.”
Coweta was the second Metro Atlanta county to put a hold on data centers this year. In March, Douglas County, where a center three times the size of the Mall of Georgia is planned, declared a 90-day moratorium.
These might not seem to be much different from a lot of local controversies about data centers, but they take on a national significance because of where they are.
Last year, with an astonishing 39-fold increase in demand, Atlanta vaulted over Northern Virginia to become the nation’s top data center market.
This didn’t happen by accident. In addition to having an attractive location and electricity rates, the Atlanta market has had the energetic support of Georgia Power, the Public Service Commission, and Gov. Brian Kemp.
“That’s sort of the perfect storm in terms of why it’s taken off,” Gordon Dolvin, research director for the real estate investment firm CBRE, said.
A 2022 study by the University of Georgia’s Carl Vinson Institute of Government concluded that tax incentives accounted for 90 percent of the database business the state has attracted. But a study this year by the nonprofit research group Good Jobs First claimed that some states have lost more from their incentives than they’ve gained from the business they’ve brought in.
The authors of that study said it was hard to do a complete assessment because many states shroud important information about these deals from public view. Given the way things are going these days, you can’t help but think that’s a problem that’s going to get worse, not better. Underneath clouds of confidentiality, discontent is growing at the grassroots level.
Data centers are essential to artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency, the siren lures of an as-yet unproven economy. If multi-billion dollar developments are beginning to encounter speed bumps here in the new epicenter of data center development, it’s pointing to a lot of political conflicts ahead.
Last month in South Carolina, the board of the Santee Cooper utility took a different direction from the Atlanta model when it approved a new rate structure that requires new heavy users like data centers to sign 15-year contracts and pay upfront for certain startup costs, in addition to higher rates for their electricity.
“What we’re trying to do is protect existing customers from significant price increases because of a new customer coming on the system,” Santee Cooper CEO Jimmy Staton said. He defended the contract requirement as a protection against companies picking up their equipment and moving on if they find a better deal elsewhere.
“We build something on their behalf, and they exit, and that leaves all those remaining stranded costs being paid for by the other customers on the system, which would be all of our customers,” he said.
They don’t make electricity in South Carolina any differently than they do in Georgia, and everything Staton said seems worthy of discussion here.
/I stand corrected on this last point. The Georgia Public Service Commission approved a similar measure in January, before the South Carolina board passed the measure. The Georgia rule says Georgia Power can charge new customers using more than 100 megawatts under different terms and conditions than standard customers, and allows for longer contracts to insure data centers owners don’t leave the state before paying for the infrastructure they built. PSC Commissioner Tricia Pridemore, the current president of the National Association of Regulatory Utilities Commissioners, has been active in promoting this rule across the country.
Thank you for your article. Georgia Power has increased residential rates by 37% (1.8 billion dollars) during the last 2 years. Residential rates are above the national average but industrial rates are 58% of the national average. It appears on the surface that Georgia residents are being forced to subsidize commercial business such as the 200 existing data centers. When evaluating data center impact those additional costs to the Georgia residents need to be included. If that is done data centers would not appear attractive. Georgia has focused so much on attracting business that we are forgetting citizens costs.
This has not included the costs of water needs by data centers (9 million gallons per day for Sail alone) or the increased global warming, loss of peace and quiet of rural conservation land and quality of rural life, destruction of natural habitate etc. Georgia Power contributes significantly to political funds.
5 of the national average.
Thank you for writing this article. I am a team member of Citizens for Rural Coweta, a committee committed to fighting against Project Sail and the rezoning of rural conservative land to industrial. I will be directly and negatively impacted by Project Sail as well as all the other homeowners near this proposed site. We have worked hard trying to get the community informed and involved. Articles like this help spread our message. If you are interested in doing any other articles about Project Sail and need community members to interview we would be more than happy to participate. Thanks again!