Bad news: data center companies are buying nine New England power plants.
That's bad for about a thousand reasons; here's a handful. Newly-built data centers are wreaking havoc on communities around the world. They cause air, noise, water, and soil pollution. They contribute massively to climate change and the heat waves, wildfires, and extreme storms. They increase utility bills; they are heavily subsidized at ratepayer and taxpayer expense. They threaten rolling blackouts within a year.
Here's the details of what's going on. Data center companies Digital Bridge and Soft Bank are seeking to buy ArcLight, a private equity firm that is one of the largest owners of power plants in the United States. ArcLight owns 9 plants in Connecticut:
Three in New Haven County: Branford, New Haven Harbor, and Devon (in Milford)
One in New London County: Montville
Two in Fairfield County: Cos Cob (in Greenwich) and Bridgeport Harbor
Two in Litchfield County: Torrington Terminal and Franklin Drive (also in Torrington)
One in Middlesex County: Middletown
They also own or co-own plants in 14 other states and provinces in the United States and Canada (Arizona, British Columbia, California, Florida, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Ontario, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina).
Digital Bridge and Soft Bank have an explicit intention to expand and focus on their AI capacity. We feel confident they intend to use ArcLight's power generation capabilities to construct data centers across Connecticut and across the country.
Plus, eight of ArcLight's power plants in Connecticut are peaker plants, meaning they run only occasionally. These eight of the peakers run at less than 2% of their capacity. If these power plants are used to power data centers, their emissions and pollution could skyrocket.
But there is also good news.
First, people are fighting data centers across the US and around the world. This issue is already in the public eye (unlike some weird complicated stuff this campaign has spent time explaining in the past), and it’s uniting people across the political spectrum.
Second, we have opportunities to intervene before this merger goes through and data centers sites get officially proposed or begin construction. No Coal No Gas is pursuing regulatory intervention with bodies like FERC and CT PURA. We know from experience that this tactic usually doesn't win on its own -- but it's good at buying time and building power for more organizing.
So far, town level moratoriums and bans on building data centers are one of the strongest and most popular tools available. Around the country, 150 moratoriums have already passed and another 100 are in progress. New Haven, one of the towns with an ArcLight power plant, is currently considering a moratorium! Local bans on data centers can protect against future development and show companies that there will be strong, organized resistance if they try and come into our communities. Each local moratorium or ban benefits the towns around it, because environmental and climate effects cross town lines. Towns can also strengthen other regulations, around corporate transparency, substantive public participation, energy use, and environmental impact, to name just a few.
And of course, we're always happy to get creative if the time becomes right.
Let's keep these power plants out of the hands of data centers. In fact, let's shut these peakers down entirely.
