By Buzzy Hassrick and Daniel Rasmussen
Cody Enterprise
Via- Wyoming News Exchange

CODY — Although the city of Cody hasn’t been approached about locating a data center here, the topic of such a business is on people’s minds.

“It’s a common conversation in general. It’s popular nationwide,” city manager Tony Tolstedt said. “[But] there’s been no approach to date.”

Last week, the Laramie County Commissioners approved Project Jade in Cheyenne, a sprawling A.I. facility by Crusoe and Tallgrass that could eventually reach 10 gigawatts and become the largest in the country. Last October, also near Cheyenne, Related Digital broke ground on a 302 megawatt campus.

The Wyoming Outdoor Council is concerned over the growing A.I. development and maintains that the state needs to develop guidelines that address energy infrastructure, sustainability and community impacts of data centers.

At the state level, Wyoming needs legislation to prepare for the spread of data centers, especially their large energy demands, said John Burrows, WOC energy and policy director. 

He stressed the state needs “to make sure the energy cost isn’t passed on to other ratepayers.”

”We’ve known for a while that this was going to be a big issue, and we have to get ahead of it,” Burrows continued. “Now is the time to really understand the different policy considerations around data centers that we need to promote and have in place before that wave catches up to us in Wyoming.”

Although the topic may not arise in the upcoming legislative budget session, “it’ll probably come up in the general session next year,” Burrows said. “We’re glad to work with any legislator about regulatory proposals.”

In Cody, Tolstedt said any proposal would be reviewed to ascertain if the city had the capacity to meet the developer’s requirements for such services as electricity and water. He noted that a data center could employ a closed-loop system for water, rather than “a pump and dump,” which would lower that usage, but data centers tend to have “a high demand for electricity.”

Along with his city job, Tolstedt is an ex officio board member of Forward Cody, a nonprofit economic development organization. 

Neither its CEO, Jake Hogan, nor Cody Chamber director Jennifer Thoma returned phone inquiries about data centers.

Demands, transparency, impacts

One key concern WOC identified with new data centers is the energy those facilities demand. 

The U.S. Department of Energy projects that by 2028, data centers will represent 12% of electricity consumption nationwide, compared to just 4% in 2023. 

Additionally, energy needs of data centers, if not properly governed, could potentially cause rate increases for Wyoming residents.

“This demand increase is really what everyone is talking about,” Burrows said. “How are we going to meet that, and what technology are we going to use to meet that?”

As a result of the call for resources, such as electricity and water, companies should be required to disclose their usage, he said.

“Believe it or not, a lot of that becomes proprietary company information. If you don’t have disclosure laws, Silicon Valley data centers are not going to want to disclose those things, and communities aren’t going to know what their impact is,” Burrows said.

WOC is also concerned that data centers complement community well-being. 

Burrows cited an agreement between Cheyenne and the Related Digital data center, in which the company pledged to provide incentives for affordable housing in the city.

“(When) these companies come in from Silicon Valley or Texas or wherever and they’re pitching a data-center idea, we just need to make sure they’re in agreement with the community and they’re actually bringing benefits to that community,” he added.

Air quality is another issue, as the data centers can rely on diesel generators like the ones at Project Jane.

“You look at the actual emissions that could come from turning all 128 of those on at a time and it’s just ‘Wow, talk about dirty air,’” Burrows said.

While the state may offer ample room for such facilities, their effects on not only the communities but also the environment need to be considered.

“Wyoming has a lot of open space – there’s no question about that – but we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of square feet facilities, with some even larger, and if you don’t have a plan for how you’re building that out, you could really impact things like wildlife corridors or other land use natural resource needs that a community or ecosystem could have,” he said.

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