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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowYou don’t need to be too technically savvy to pick up on the charged atmosphere surrounding large-scale data centers. Various technology-heavy industries need data centers as a kind of way station and storage point for all the electronic information they generate and process. As technology evolves at a breakneck speed, the size of these centers grows. In October, the financial firm Blackstone forecast that over the next five years, the United States will see $1 trillion in data center investments.
Indiana really wasn’t on the map of the big tech firms, at least in terms of building centers, until very recently. In the last 14 months, seven data center projects have been announced for the state representing more than $15 billion in potential investment. Some Indiana legislators see them as huge economic development opportunities. Indiana House Speaker Todd Huston, R-Fishers, has said, quote, “I want every data center that we can get in the state of Indiana.” But the sudden surge in announced centers has generated a lot of concern as well about their drain on Indiana utilities and, in some cases, their water-intensive cooling systems.
Indiana lawmakers are considering a spate of bills regarding data centers in the current legislative session. IBJ technology reporter Susan Orr is our guest this week on the IBJ Podcast to get us current on the demand for data centers and how that’s manifesting in Indiana.
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We will need more power….Time to set up an array of nuclear reactors in the state.
Small Modular Reactors (SMR) would be the way to go.
The cap ex associated with these investments is a red herring. Indiana doesn’t collect sales/use taxes on the equipment – or on the energy it consumes. It basically abates personal property sales on it as well. Simply put, these data centers only locate where there is data center specific legislation in place that all but exempts them from taxes. And they don’t even employ that many people. They are not that much different from warehouses.