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Amazon said Monday that it will spend US$20 billion on two data centre complexes in Pennsylvania, including one it is building alongside a nuclear power plant that has drawn federal scrutiny over an arrangement to essentially plug right into the power plant.
Kevin Miller, vice president of global data centres at Amazon’s cloud computing subsidiary, Amazon Web Services, told The Associated Press that the company will build another data centre complex just north of Philadelphia.
One data centre is being built next to northeastern Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna nuclear power plant. The other will be in Fairless Hills at a logistics campus, the Keystone Trade Center, on what was once a US Steel mill.
At a news conference in Berwick in the shadow of the power plant, Governor Josh Shapiro called it the largest private sector investment in Pennsylvania’s history. He said Monday’s announcement is “just the beginning” because his administration is working with Amazon on additional data centre projects in the state.
While critics say data centres employ relatively few people and pack little long-term job-creation punch, their advocates say they require a huge number of construction jobs to build, spend enormous sums at area vendors and generate strong tax revenues for local governments.
Shapiro touted the work that will keep construction trades members busy building Amazon’s data centres, the tech jobs that will be waiting for graduates of area colleges and the millions of dollars in property taxes that will flow to schools and local governments.
“For too long, we’ve watched as talents across Pennsylvania got hollowed out and left behind,” Shapiro said at the news conference. “No more. Now is our time to rebuild those communities and invest in them. This investment in Pennsylvania starts reversing that trend.”
The announcements add to the billions of dollars in Big Tech’s data centre cash already flowing into the state.
Since 2024 started, Amazon has committed to about US$10 billion apiece to data centre projects in Mississippi, Indiana, Ohio and North Carolina as it ramps up its investment in infrastructure to compete with other tech giants to meet growing demand for artificial intelligence products.
The rapid growth of cloud computing and artificial intelligence has fuelled demand for data centres that need power to run servers, storage systems, networking equipment and cooling systems.
The majority owner of the Susquehanna nuclear power plant, Talen Energy, announced last year that it had sold its data centre to Amazon for US$650 million in a deal to eventually provide 960 megawatts. That’s 40 per cent of the output of one of the nation’s largest nuclear power plants, or enough to power more than a half-million homes.
However, the arrangement between Talen and Amazon – called a “behind the meter” connection – has been held up by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in the first such case to come before the agency.
It has raised questions over whether diverting power to higher-paying customers will leave enough for others and whether it’s fair to excuse big power users from paying for the grid.
For Big Tech, plugging energy-hungry data centres directly into a power plant can take years off their development timelines and is a much faster route to procuring power than having to connect to the congested electricity grid.
It’s not clear when FERC, which blocked the deal on a procedural grounds, will decide the matter, leaving in limbo regulatory treatment of the deal and others that likely would follow.
Already in Pennsylvania, Microsoft announced a deal with the owner of the shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear power plant to restart the reactor under a 20-year agreement to supply its data centres in four states with energy.
Meanwhile, the owners of what was once Pennsylvania’s biggest coal-fired power plant say they will turn it into a US$10 billion natural gas-powered data centre campus.
AP
English (US) ·