Quote:
Originally Posted by sailor734
CBC story on the project and the EIA this morning.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/saint-john-data-centre-9.7167767
Sounds like the water concerns are a non starter which leaves the power plant emissions for the opponents to hang their hat on.
My first thought is that growth and development doesn't come without change and not all of it is going to be positive. This is one of those situations where a value judgement has to be made at to whether or not it's worth it. 
One thing that does come to mind is that given NB Power's application for a gas plant along with Voltagrid's the emissions for the data centre will be 400Mw of gas fired generation. |
It certainly makes the water usage-based opposition a moot point. The amount of water associated with the initial fill is negligible in comparison to other local industrial users. It won't stop people continuing to say it on social media though.
The change that hasn't been picked up on much in this article and that I quoted above, is that they intend to run their own generators as the primary power source rather than the grid.
In some ways, this could be a positive change as it puts less strain and reliance on the grid and instead shifts it to their own generation which helps combat reliability concerns many have.
However, it also means that they are not using more 'green' sources of power that the grid can provide like Nuclear, Wind, or Hydro and instead they will be outputting GHG's much more consistently, even if the grid sees vast improvement in the coming decade.
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