Google's Data Centers Could Reshape Minnesota. Here's What We Still Don't Know
By Kathryn Hoffman, MCEA Executive Officer
The news is out. The mystery company behind the controversial hyper-scale data centers proposed in Hermantown and Pine Island is Google. Google made this announcement with great fanfare, along with proposed clean energy investments.
Many of our supporters have asked us what this might mean for these data center proposals. MCEA has lawsuits against both of them, challenging the inadequacy of the environmental studies, which provide few details to the public. Does Google’s announcement change anything?
Certainly, we’re glad to learn that clean energy and battery investments are part of the conversation surrounding these proposals. Data centers consume tremendous amounts of energy, and many states are building new fossil-fuel plants to meet their demand. In Minnesota, we should be demanding clean energy investments with every data center proposal, at a minimum.
But the timing of these announcements is awkward at best. Both projects have already undergone environmental review, and specifics regarding these clean energy investments are nowhere to be found in those documents. Indeed, it appears that both cities still had nondisclosure agreements in place both prior to and during the environmental review. A lot of other details are also missing from those documents, such as potential water use, noise, light, and the use of onsite diesel generators. As one of our staff members put it, it is telling that we learned more about these data centers from Google’s press release than from the environmental review documents.
Minnesotans deserve better than a press release after the environmental study is published and public comment is closed. As it stands, we are left with more questions than answers. Are the clean energy investments enough to cover the entire energy demand of these data centers? If not, what types of energy resources would still need to be built? What is the timing of these clean energy investments - will they be online before the data center is built? What if Google decides to change course on clean energy investments later? Are these commitments enforceable?
If indeed these are meaningful investments and a net benefit for Minnesota and our communities, they need to be part of the environmental review process, subject to public comment, investigated by regulators to determine if they truly offset energy demand, and enforceable as part of a permit process.
Further, Hermantown and Pine Island are just two of more than twenty potential hyper-scale data center proposals MCEA is tracking across the state. If even just ten of those are built, they would consume as much energy as all of Minnesota’s 2.3 million households combined. And that’s saying nothing about the potential impacts to our water supply, precious metals, or noise and light pollution. The communities that would be living near these facilities, and the Minnesotans who depend on the resources they would consume, deserve more than a corporation’s word.
With this much on the line, it’s insufficient to bank on corporate benevolence to protect our natural resources and communities. Google’s stated intentions cannot replace strong regulation. Minnesotans deserve comprehensive regulations and binding commitments to ensure our state has the guardrails in place to govern a kind of development that’s never been done here before.
That's why MCEA and other environmental and grassroots community groups are calling on our State Legislature to act. Incremental changes were made last session, but we still have work to do. Overall, data center proposals are moving faster than policy, and the best outcome from the legislative session would be a two-year pause while the state studies the cumulative impacts of multiple data center proposals and develops a strategy for development and guardrails. We need a permitting system that is actually built for these large data centers (we don’t have one yet), a study of cumulative impacts across proposals, a specific permit to deal with major water usage, the banning of NDAs during environmental review, and potentially a reconsideration of the substantial tax breaks we’re currently giving to technology corporations.
Our lawsuits challenging the environmental review of the Hermantown and Pine Island proposals are continuing. Our goal is robust environmental review and public comment, not voluntary corporate commitments. The best outcome would be a commitment by the cities to conduct an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on each of Google’s hyper-scale data center proposals, including proposed clean energy investments. If, in fact, these clean energy investments make these data centers a win for our climate, an EIS will demonstrate that.
Google should welcome the kind of robust regulatory framework that protects the environment and the communities it's asking to host its facilities. Strong permitting requirements, transparent environmental review, and binding clean energy commitments aren't obstacles to responsible development; they're the foundation of it. Minnesota has a long track record of balancing economic growth with environmental stewardship, and there's no reason a company with Google's resources and stated sustainability commitments can't meet that same standard.