Nye County leads data center resistance!

Speculative boom, anyone?  The data center boom has a lot of preposterous sides, and one of them is that the eye-popping data center demand projections might be nonsense.

Here's an excerpt from testimony Public Citizen Energy Program Director Tyson Slocum presented to a congressional subcommittee last year:

A February 2025 report commissioned by Nvidia for the Bipartisan Policy Center urges policymakers to pump the brakes on the panic over future data center demand, noting the ability of technological innovation to achieve computing efficiencies that can alleviate power consumption needs, with one AI expert noting their “computation engine from 18 months ago is 30 times as efficient” today. Indeed, former National Economic Council Director Brian Deese argues that forecasters consistently overestimate electricity demand, in part because they emphasize static load growth over efficiency gains, and ....

(this part in particular caught my eye)

...that some utilities may be double or even triple-counting expected data center demand as Big Tech shops the same data center proposal to multiple utilities to negotiate more lucrative deals and tax breaks.

The data center that evidently just got axed in in Pahrump (see below), along with the Boulder City data center that would be the first in the nation on Bureau of Land Management land, have a lot in common, including:

Yeah, the techy techy kabillionaires like to keep their secrets, since they hate each other because each thinks they deserve to be the master of the universe and the one human AI will allow to survive or whatever.

And companies in all industries prefer not to disclose anything unless they have to for all sorts of reasons, including some that are legitimate.

But along with all the other horrible terrible no good very bad characteristics of the AI-driven data center infestation, a lot of these proposals might be merely speculative. Or, a lot of them might get built, but there won't be a market for them after all.

So along with any other requirements and conditions and stipulations that local and/or state governments attach to the data center approval process, maybe we should also make them post reclamation bonds ha ha.

IN NEVADA CURRENT

Nye leads the way (in a good way for a change). The Nye County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to ban the construction and operation of data centers in Nevada’s Hydrographic Basin 162, becoming the first municipality in Nevada to pass an outright ban on data centers. Jeniffer Solis reports: Nye County totally bans data centers in over-appropriated water basin

For six years, Gov. Joe Lombardo, Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill, and Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson have refused to respond to questions about Jon Ponder’s behavior and actions as leader of Hope for Prisoners. Now that some beans have been spilled, those upstanding persons hailing from, as Lombardo likes to call it, "the law enforcement space," continue to adhere to step 1 from the Nevada public relations playbook: Clam up. Dana Gentry reports: Hope for Prisoners board was advised to fire Ponder in 2020, letter confirms

Reid Airport is not a Core Civic fulfillment center. Sen. Jacky Rosen and a group of senators are condemning recent immigration enforcement activity at airports nationwide and calling on Trump administration officials to disclose how ICE and TSA are collaborating. April Corbin Girnus reports: Rosen to DHS: Disclose info-sharing agreement between ICE, TSA

Good Luck