MINNPOST
Summary
During the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, a nearby data center supplied waste heat that kept the pools in the Olympic Aquatics Center warm. It is a vivid example that these facilities, often seen only as power-hungry warehouses, can also be engines of innovation that support communities beyond the digital services they provide.
In Minnesota, where winters are long and cold, heat from data centers could someday warm schools, homes and businesses, cutting emissions and lowering bills. But for every example of innovation, there is also tension about where these projects belong. Local concerns regarding proposed data centers in Minnesota have ranged from noise, traffic and energy use to frustrations over transparency.
Small- and large-scale data centers now present another opportunity at our doorstep. These facilities are arriving in every corner of the country. We should not treat them as an existential threat but rather approach them as an industry that needs to be carefully integrated into our built environment, towns and neighborhoods so that Minnesotans share in the benefits and are part of the technologies shaping the future.
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