AI/Data Centers in North Texas

The Problem

https://www.eli.org/vibrant-environment-blog/ais-cooling-problem-how-data-centers-are-transforming-water-use

U.S. data centers directly consumed 21.2 billion liters of water in 2014 and 66 billion liters in 2023, a more than 300% increase in a decade

Average US household uses ~0.55 million litres per year

Terawatt-hour (TWh) is a unit of energy representing one trillion watt-hours. It is commonly used to measure large-scale electricity generation and consumption, such as national power grids

1 TWh equals 1,000 GWh or 1 billion kWh

Average U.S. residential household consumes approximately 10,791 kilowatt-hours (kWh)

Joe's Solution

Stop offering tax abatements.

first Stargate data center in Abilene, Texas, could get an 85% tax break on billions of dollars worth of property

To qualify for the tax break, AI startup Crusoe will need to spend a minimum of $2.4 billion of a $3.5 billion "targeted investment."

Business Insider

Abeline has to expand water access, manage traffic, deal with housing shortages, and absorb a sudden population surge…and the companies driving that growth are getting an 85% break on property taxes…

Who exactly is paying for all of this?

Because it’s not the billion-dollar corporations.

It’s the people already living there.

The facts

Abeline is our cautionary tale.

- OpenAI is worth approximately $852 billion.
- Oracle is worth approximately $503 billion.
- Softbank is worth approximately $172 billion.
- Microsoft is worth approximately $3.1 trillion.

But they need corporate tax abatements, so the people of Abilene can pay $3,000 a month to live in an apartment in Abilene, Texas.

Abilene was chosen because it was cheap, had space, had a political environment willing to say yes, and because the state of Texas has built an entire economic model around giving corporations whatever they ask for and calling it growth.