INTERVIEW: Gov’ Gordon Talks Data Center Concerns

Wyoming's Governor Mark Gordon paid a visit to the studios of Wyoming's morning radio talk show with host Glenn Woods. Among the topics discussed were data centers.

You can hear that part of the interview in the audio file below.

The governor spoke of the international and national data center boom and the concerns over energy and water. Wyoming can certainly provide the energy, he said.

As for the water issue, Governor Gordon had recently taken a tour of an expanding Microsoft data center near Cheyenne, where he learned that the cooling water will be in a closed-loop system, much like the radiator of your car. The water will indeed have to be cleaned and flushed from time to time, but it will not be the water loss that some think it will be.

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But what if a data center tries to start up, but then fails and goes bankrupt? Are we just left with a big building sitting out there in the prairie? Who cleans that up?  The governor answered that with the idea of a reclamation process, much like those that are demanded of coal, gas, oil, wind, and solar, where those companies have to put money aside just in case.

Gordon stressed that data centers in Wyoming would be subject to Wyoming rules that the state could write to satisfy its own concerns.

He also stressed that while the data centers would not employ many people once completed, they would provide substantial tax revenue to low-population counties that could use the money.