Will the Tech Industry Go Underground?

Last week, I referred to the new digital Nimbyism, involving the intensifying repudiation of increasingly large, noisy, and power-hungry AI datacenters by communities and citizens everywhere.

The public is so inimical toward datacenters that cloud and AI providers are considering the quixotic alternative of putting datacenters in space. It’s madness, of course, but the rise of the idea demonstrates the angst and desperation felt within the industry.

Lest you think I’m imaging a growing antipathy to datacenters beyond the server- and switch-loving infrastructure teams that inhabit the buildings — in diminishing numbers, by the way, as a result of IT automation, now goosed by generative and agentic AI — consider a recent article published in House Digest.

No, I’m not joking. There’s an article about datacenters in House Digest. Usually, House Digest is not one of my go-to publications for source material, but we live in a time when what was once considered unusual is now within the realm of possibility and rapidly approach the bullseye of extreme probability. So, yes, the article in question was irrefutably published, and it considers whether datacenters harm or enrich property values.

Shunning Datacenters: The New Technophobia

The verdict, we learn, is mostly negative. On the whole, according to the article, the preponderance of available evidence suggests that homeowners have reason for wariness, if not hostility. I realize most of my readers are denizens of the technology industry, which means they’re probably partial to datacenters, but ask yourself this question and answer it candidly: Would you want to live next door to an AI datacenter the size of a theme park? Would you want to reside alongside a baleful architectural monstrosity that sucks the water and energy from your community like a vampire on a weekend blood bender?

The article concludes as follows:

Large-scale data centers don't just alter the local tax base. They also quickly change the character of an area. It isn't just the way several large concrete structures dwarf nearby residential homes. Data centers also often have backup generators and cooling systems that add a constant hum to the area. Along with the noise, they rely on astronomically high electricity usage, which floods communities with harmful pollutants and threatens local power grids. 
Researchers cited by The Washington Post also estimate that a single data center can use up to 5 million gallons of water per day. This threatens not just residential areas but entire regions, especially those facing water scarcity as a result of prolonged droughts. Concerns about utility costs, or even access, can harm both actual and perceived residential property values because they strongly influence how attractive a community feels to buyers.
The bottom line is that data centers are significantly driving up costs for local residents, which means even if you can't see it from your dream house, there's still a hefty price to pay for living near one. If you're preparing to buy a home or you already own one near a data center, you'll need to remain cautiously curious about how it's impacting not just your property value but your overall quality of life. What makes the biggest difference between burden and benefit is how close the data center is to your property, what buffers exist in terms of landscaping or other noise mitigation efforts, local zoning regulations that keep potential disturbances in check, and how prepared local utility companies are to provide services without frequent rate hikes.

Contingency Plans Required

Where there’s an article like this one, concerns lurk. The concerns will generate other articles, further intensifying the concerns that spawned the original articles. This is a loop of intensifying fear and loathing, and the technology industry should take note and begin seriously considering contingency plans.

As datacenters get bigger, proliferate, and become pervasive, people are pushing back. As the grassroots resistance grows, the tech titans behind these datacenters might have to sweeten the pot, in one or another, to get their digital pleasure palaces built. The sweetening will involve more spending, inflating the costs of datacenters that are already astoundingly costly propositions.

You can understand why Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman, and Elon Musk are casting longing glances toward the skies. Building datacenters on the surface of this planet is becoming contentious, heading toward the infeasible. People might want AI, to varying degrees, but not enough to accept a reduction in their property values.

If putting datacenters on earth is fated to meet implacable resistance, putting them in space is impractical, and casting them afloat on the seas is equally risible, where can AI purveyors go to find new frontiers?

Look Down, Not Up

Well, maybe they should go down below. No, not to hell, but underground. If you can’t build datacenters in space, and earth is becoming an intolerably fraught locale, perhaps you can go subterranean.

Even with the benefit of gravity, building datacenters underground isn’t a slam dunk. As with nearly everything else, challenges loom. Principal among them: high initial construction costs, inconvenient access for maintenance, daunting humidity control, and the difficulty, in some locales, of establishing adequate power infrastructure.

Still, the proposition has potential, especially with the advent and evolution of increasingly capable robotics technologies and accompanying advances in excavation and construction methods. There are precedents already.

Swedish cloud provider Banhof has constructed datacenters in what were once cold-war bunkers. Norway’s Green Mountain has carved an energy-efficient datacenter from a mountainside that once served as NATO munitions depot. Also in Norway, the similarly energy-efficient Lefdal Mine Data Centers, as the name suggests, are located in what was once a mountainside olivine mine. That facility uses a fiord water for cooling. Iron Mountain has a data-storage facility in Pennsylvania that is 220 feet underground and uses a natural aquifer for cooling.

A benefit that accrues to underground datacenters is their capacity to tap into renewable energy (geothermal, hydroelectric, even solar extracted from dappled mountainsides), as well as their ability to incorporate small modular reactors (SMRs). Despite the Trump Administration’s war on allegedly “woke” renewable energy, the technology industry will increasingly realize that all energy matters. You can’t afford a culture war against viable energy supplies.

Looking up to the stars is poetic. Visionaries have often sought inspiration by gazing toward the heavens. But perhaps the future of datacenters is a little more down to earth.