This story was originally published on HackerNoon at:
https://hackernoon.com/the-data-center-your-neighbors-actually-want.
The Data Center Your Neighbors Actually Want
What if the most hated building in American land use became the anchor of the local food system?
Check more stories related to tech-stories at:
https://hackernoon.com/c/tech-stories.
You can also check exclusive content about
#data-centers,
#ai-infrastructure,
#sustainability,
#energy-efficiency,
#community-development,
#artificial-intelligence,
#waste-heat-recovery,
#green-tech, and more.
This story was written by:
@intelligent-harvest. Learn more about this writer by checking
@intelligent-harvest's about page,
and for more stories, please visit
hackernoon.com.
Data center opposition is rational: communities absorb the heat, water, and noise while the benefits ship out over fiber. But a data center is thermodynamically a heat engine, and its waste heat — already made usable by the industry's shift to liquid cooling — can grow food in co-located greenhouses instead of being rejected to the sky. Europe has done this for a decade, Germany wrote it into law, and Virginia's Senate just voted 39–0 to pursue it. The industry shouldn't ask how to make communities tolerate data centers; it should build data centers the neighbors would fight to keep.