Tanner Avery dreams of data centers
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As our dependence on technology and artificial intelligence continues to skyrocket, the imperative for more data storage rises with it. 90% of the world’s data was created in the past two years, and the total volume of data doubles every two years.
Data storage is extremely energy intensive, too. The warehouses stacked with thousands of computers that hold our data consume between 1-1.5% of all global electricity (and, sometimes, absurd amounts of water as well).
Yet Tanner Avery, for one, believes that Montana would benefit from being home to more of these data centers.
Originally a rodeo kid from Colorado, Avery lives in Bozeman and helms the Center for New Frontiers at the limited-government think tank the Frontier Institute. He recently penned an essay championing the opportunities presented by data centers as part of Frontier’s Montana 2050 Project, and I was keen to ask him more about their appeal, and the obstacles associated with them. (According to the New York Times, there were about 2,700 data centers in the US in 2022. According to Data Center Journal, there are currently nine in Montana.)
And hell, I know that a deep dive on data centers ain’t exactly the sexiest subject under the sun, but I’m intrigued by the ways it intersects with—and impacts—other facets of life in Montana: energy conservation, the role of government oversight, our evolving state economy. I hope you will be, too.
Max: Why are you so interested in data centers?
Tanner Avery: No matter where you look, data's becoming more and more important. It really bubbled up in the late 2010’s, with cloud computing. The rise of AI has made it abundantly clear that data centers are going to be a huge, integral piece of our economy going forward.
It's hard to conceive how much data is generated and needed for everyday life.
What does a data center look like?
This is a giant warehouse, with thousands of computers in it. They are the storage and computing power that's necessary to make the internet, and the general economy today, work.
Why do you believe Montana is well-suited to house more data centers?
When people are looking for a location to build data centers, they have to solve a series of problems. One of them is weather. Data centers generate a massive amount of heat. If you have a data center in a very hot climate, you need to be able to cool it, and that's gonna take more [energy]. About 40% of a data center's power needs go to cooling the facility to keep the computers within an operating range.
Montana is the perfect location: we have a cool and dry climate as well as a relatively low natural disaster risk.
You also need affordable enough land and abundant enough land to have a giant warehouse that houses all these computers.
Montana has a great abundance of power, and we're strategically located between the western part of the United States—which is already a data center hub—the Midwest and the East Coast. [Montana is also] business friendly.
If we build a bunch of data centers here, would they employ a lot of people? What are the benefits for Montana?
This is the economy of the future. If we want to have other high-tech industries come to Montana, we need data centers to be here as well.
Data centers are driving energy innovation. They are absolutely driving the demand for renewable energy, as well as carbon capture.
What are data centers doing to offset or lower emissions?
A lot of data centers have really started to look for ways to utilize renewable energy or carbon neutral energy. For instance, Meta [the parent company of Facebook], they're actually pulling wind energy right now from Pryor Mountain Wind in Carbon County. And Fervo Energy, an enhanced geothermal company, announced some really groundbreaking developments in partnership with Google. [Note: The Fervo project is up and running in Nevada, not Montana. But Montana offers lots of opportunity for geothermal energy].
Geothermal energy is much less intermittent; wind only blows sometimes, sometimes it's cloudy out.
Most data centers are air-cooled, but as we become more data-intensive with AI, they're looking increasingly towards water-cooled centers. Most cities have a water treatment plant on the edge of town kind of by itself, and there's always a problem with what to do with the water. Data centers [in Oregon] have opted to say, “Hey, we can take this water off your hands and use it to cool our facilities.”
Data centers can be pretty noisy, right? I’m thinking of the now-defunct crypto mine outside of Missoula that drew a lot of criticism and anger from residents.
Yeah, they can be loud and they can generate a lot of heat. That’s one reason why we're seeing them move to areas that aren't in somebody's backyard, per se.
I feel like the other piece of the puzzle is the government’s role here. What would enable Montana to best capitalize on this opportunity?
History shows that for data centers, and a lot of other technologies, if you remove some barriers, you will see companies start to move to places that are more friendly to them.
What sorts of barriers are we talking about?
Some of the most impactful ones would be first protect the right to compute. There has been a pretty big backlash to AI. One of the most radical proposals out there limits how strong a computer that people can have.
We believe in the rights to free expression. We believe in property rights. And that doesn't end when you start using a computer. If the government implements regulations, [we would want them to be] narrowly tailored and the least restrictive.
[We should also] avoid expensive pitfalls such as government owned networks. Government really shouldn't be getting involved in the fiber [cable] business. They should leave it to companies that specialize in it.
How many data centers is the right amount to have here in Montana? Is it a question of adding five more? A hundred more?
I think that the best decision is to let the market decide.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
So his answer is, "if you build it they will come"? Hmmm? Where have I heard this before? Maybe we can install them on what's left of our melting glaciers, nice and cool(though as much the good ol days) and people won't be bothered by the noise(except those silly hikers and a bunch of pesky woodland creatures). By the way, I would recommend your readers/listeners look up the Frontier Institute.