Maryland's Moratorium on Data Centers

And I consider myself a proud YIMBY, like a yes in my backyard.

And when it comes to housing and lots of other things, I believe in building.

But with all of those things, there's a societal benefit to it.

There's sort of like two sides to the argument of like, OK, we hear that you don't want this built exactly this way in this place.

But also, there's a housing crisis.

We've got to build some stuff.

And on the data centers, there just kind of isn't.

People aren't clamoring desperately for this AI product in the way that they are for housing.

Yes, it is unclear how any of us benefit.

We know that the data center industry themselves say this will eliminate jobs.

We know by going to the mailbox every month that these things increase our utility bills.

Those things we know.

What we don't know is what's in it for us.

What problem are these things designed to solve that we are asking about in our lives? So yes, people see the negatives and I think the tech companies have done a terrible job of talking about or even attempting to create concrete benefits.

They could, now that they're being stymied in almost every state, Texas, Ohio, there's like 50 communities in Michigan that have moratoriums.

12 counties in Georgia.

New York now has? New York.

And the tech companies could look at this and say, wow, we are literally losing tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars because of these delays.

Wouldn't it be cheaper to go to states and say we'll buy everyone in your state a battery we'll put solar panels on every roof that in the long run is going to be a lot cheaper creating virtual power plants things like that that actually bring down your power bill they still haven't done that they still don't have a coherent message of benefit for those of us who are trying to slow them down and create a pause

Yeah, I've heard this idea thrown a lot around in the hypothetical.

If you go to someone who has a resistance heat system, an electric resistance heat system, that's very inefficient.

Replace it with a heat pump that is three times more efficient.

They're going to use a third of the electricity to heat their home.

They were previously using that freeze up space on the grid.

They could maybe use that.