Op-ed - Local View: Answers needed on resources-hogging Hermantown data center

By MCEA Northeastern Minnesota Program Director JT Haines

This op-ed originally appeared in the Duluth News Tribune 3/13/26

Now we know that the Fortune 50 company behind the secretive Hermantown hyperscale data center proposal is Google. The company’s announcement on March 3 came with typical fanfare, including the promises of jobs, tax revenue, and investments in batteries and wind power. As others have said, we with the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy are glad these important priorities are part of the conversation. But there is much to consider that Google's press release and comments did not address.

For example, Minnesota Power and others have painted a quaint picture about what these hyperscale data centers are for, pointing to our use of smartphones and streaming. Representatives of the utility (recently purchased by Blackrock, which also owns a staggering 7%, or $126 billion, of Google/Alphabet, Inc.) made this suggestion at a Hermantown City Council meeting in October, and the News Tribune reported it.

But we don’t need hyperscalers for smartphones. We already have normal data centers, thousands of them, that are adequate for such uses. The data center proposed by Google is more likely to be for AI and other intensive uses. We know from polling that average Americans have increasing concerns about this.

Would a hyperscale data center in Hermantown truly benefit us in the long-term? A lot of good people have real questions about that.

Relatedly, hyperscale data centers use enormous amounts of power. We’re talking 400 to 500 megawatts for a single center, sometimes more. That’s up to 100 times larger than an average data center today. That’s more power than all the residential homes in the Minnesota Power service area.

And yet, we still don’t even know how much energy the proposed Google center would consume. Why? Because Google and Minnesota Power haven’t told us. Nor was this information included in the city of Hermantown’s woefully inadequate environmental review. I say “woefully inadequate” because the review, an “Alternative Urban Areawide Review,” avoided actually reviewing the actual impacts on the environment of Google's specific proposal. And, of course, due to the use of nondisclosure agreements, or NDAs, that entire review process took place before the public even learned what it was for.

Whether there will be more environmental review of this Google proposal remains to be seen. We think the law requires it and are pursuing that matter in court. But it’s important to be clear that all the promises we heard with the announcement are not yet accompanied by a robust review or confirmed in anything other than a big-tech press release.

In the meantime, Google and Minnesota Power, and now the News Tribune, assure us this enormous new energy draw will not affect customer rates. Great, let’s get that in writing, too. It is simply not correct to suggest that an energy draw of this magnitude would not have impacts on us.

For one thing, it means Minnesota Power is almost certain to be back at the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission asking for even more gas infrastructure — on top of the new gas it already asked for this year.

Burning fracked gas for electricity harms our climate, pollutes our air, and is inconsistent with Minnesota’s 100% clean-electricity law. The massive energy demands of hyperscale data centers make that challenge even more difficult.

Other impacts still largely unknown include air and noise pollution, water pollution (both from direct use and power generation), and the consumption of an outrageous amount of metals like copper, the production of which has its own set of polluting effects, as we know well here in the Northland. If those minerals are as “critical” as we’re being told, we might want to deal with the reality that data centers use and waste a lot of them.

Fortunately, we have many options to address these important considerations. We should start by agreeing that, as to the secretive Hermantown proposal, an environmental impact statement should have been, and should still be, conducted. Perhaps, given the importance of the decision and the experience so far, Hermantown officials might agree it wouldn’t be a bad thing to invite a state agency to help. Minnesota Power, the News Tribune, local elected officials, and Hermantown all have the power to agree with that.

We also need more comprehensive fixes at the Legislature. Yes, some minor tweaks were made last year, but they do not go nearly far enough. The Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy and our partners are calling for updates including a permitting system 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 reviews, and a two-year moratorium until fixes like these are in place.

I happened to see a neighbor when the Google news was breaking, so I shared it. She responded, “Google has all the money,” neatly summarizing the real crux of it. At a market capitalization of $3.6 trillion, Alphabet Inc. is 10 times larger than the GDP of the entire state of Minnesota.

So, I suppose what I wonder is, in the face of all this, are we just passengers? Or can we still drive the bus?