I Am The Reason For The Demand For Data Centers - A Digital Mea Culpa
We have certainly seen our share of flurry lately surrounding the attempt at building a data center next to I-96 in Lowell Township. Meeting halls were flooded with folks, many questions went unanswered or dodged. As an aside, kudos to our community for keeping things rather civil in this day of copious hollering and threats. Well done.
I am here to answer the elephant in the room question – Why the huge uptick in demand for data centers all over Michigan and other parts of the country? In case you skipped the title – I am here to tell you that I am the reason for the demand for MORE data centers. Yup – my fault.
For those who do not know me, I have tried to live a life with action and concern toward the environment. My mother taught me to avoid waste and to recycle anything that could be recycled. I have ridden a fully electric motorcycle for eight years. My home and business pay Lowell Light and Power a wee bit extra so that our electricity comes from renewable resources. I walk to work and our recycle bin is full every other Thursday from items saved for such things at home and work.
Enough of my green efforts – I have realized over the last few days that my lifestyle is to blame for the demand for new data centers in Michigan and elsewhere. Guilty as charged.
Take my well publicized love of music. In olden times I had a record collection that did not cry out for any type of storage other than the fruit crates they were stored in. Today I have a dozen and a half playlists on YouTube Music. A couple of the playlists are utilized in our store and both of them contain over nine hours of carefully chosen (by me) music that I want to play in our store. My playlists are available at home, work, and you might see me walking down the street wearing a big pair of headphones while listening to one of them down loaded onto my phone so I can really enjoy my walks.
In ancient days I relied on my memory of great concerts. These days I have two or three different videos of Phil Collins and Chester Thompson playing their famed “drum duet” from back in the day. I am no longer dependent on my brain to replay the fantastic concert by Todd Rundgren and Utopia promoting the “Ra” album, I can find it all on YouTube.
My use of Facebook (Meta) has been going on for years. Sixteen years to be exact. Just yesterday some random picture/post of mine showed up with the title “A memory from 14 years ago.” Scrolling through my posts and pictures I come across tons of them from days gone by – I have a great one of my grandson in diapers with a fantastic expression on his face. He is eight years old now. I have another one holding our oldest grandson as a toddler upside down in one arm (I was stronger then) like a fish. That grandson will be driving by himself in about two months. My Meta digital footprint is 16 years long and includes tons of pictures and a few videos. I have used Meta to promote our store for about the same number of years – and we love to post pictures and videos of our latest offerings. All digital data that requires storage somewhere.
I am most comfortable behind a keyboard, but some of my customers insist on communicating via text. When it comes to my ability to text, I am ever thankful to the AI gods, (there are AI gods, right?), for the ability to put auto fill to use when I text. It saves me gobs of time not having to text my full name, the store hours, and a host of other things provided for me just to help me text.
I like to play word games on my phone prior to falling asleep. Some where some data center is keeping tabs about how many games I have played, my winning percentage, and a host of other factoids about my hobby. Speaking of apps, I have a couple on my phone that I no longer use. For a while I tried a fitness tracker thing. While I no longer use it, I can rest assured that if I blew the dust off it and put it back on my wrist it would and could recall how many steps I took on my last measured walk two years ago along with my heart rate and a whole bunch of other stuff.
I could go on – like telling you how revolutionary GPS was when I worked at a radio station in the 90’s and an engineer showed up with one. How antiquated that would sound when our phones and cars and watches and tablets now tell us where we are with dang near pin point accuracy.
The fact of the matter is that my digital consumption is responsible for the demand for electricity burning, water gulping data centers. It is my fault that vast areas are filled with the mind numbing hum of computers and/or their cooling systems needed just for me to enjoy my music or see that cute video of my grand daughter from last year.
Very sorry to have caused all this fuss.
Comments
I feel fortunate to share with you, that your 16 years of facebook photos and youtube playlists have absolutely nothing to do with the hundreds of new terra watt hours of electricity demand that come from training and processing of large language models and AI queries LOL - I hope this brings you some relief!!!
This unprecedented hyperscale data center growth is exclusively linked to AI, let's be very clear about that please.
Did you know that a data center being developed in Saline Michigan for Open AI will require 1.4 Giga Watts of electricity? Did you know the Palisades nuclear power plant on the shores of lake Michigan generates 800 Mega Watts of electricity? The means it will require ~2+ nuclear power plants worth of electricity, Cliff.
Did you know the project in Lowell could be one of the top 5 largest contracts in Consumers Energy history?
How good are you at being able to spot AI generated content?
If I show you a picture or video that isn't real, but you believe it is real, does that concern you?
Do you think your children will use social media and AI?
Do you think your children will be able to tell, fact from fiction?
Do you think AI affects democratic institutions in a positive way or a negative way?
Do you think AI's growth affects the environment in a positive way or a negative way?
Do you think AI's rapid adoptions benefits the richest companies in the world of local communities?
Lots to consider on this one.
Thanks for sharing your opinion, and for allowing me to participate in this community dialogue.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/10/24/what-we-know-about-energy-use-at-us-data-centers-amid-the-ai-boom/
The situation in Lowell is hardly worth discussing at this point, is it? The City of Lowell backed out and unless the Township figures a way to magically grow a sewer system by the freeway.....This situation was mis-handled from the outset which is too bad.
I find it ironic and mind numbing when people use social media to go on rants about data centers. No data center - no social media. That is why I tried to point my finger at myself in the hopes that people would examine their own lives and patterns to see how much they rely on data centers.
We have three kids and five grand-kids and they all use social media to some degree. Their abilities to tell fact from fiction are going to be challenged in every way - not just AI. People on both sides of MOST issues these days use "facts" and "the truth" very loosely.
One of the fun (or not so fun) parts of growing older is the perspective one gains from each time they orbit the sun. The more times around, the more things you get to see and experience. When I was a kid, we changed the oil in our back yard and dumped the oil in the ground. Ooops, we realized that was not a good thing to do when I was probably 13-14. We used to take EVERYTHING to the dump in Grand Rapids. Oooops, that all changed about the time I started driving.
What is my point? People are going to have to figure out how to make this stuff work without killing all of us.
There are lots of things to consider on this issue.
I asked two ladies that stopped in my store in Lowell in their effort to pass out flyers about the data center this question: "Are you against ALL data centers or just this particular one?" One of them was honest enough to admit she had never thought about it that way.
Here is another question I could ask you or myself or anyone: Are you against every form of AI or are you just against what ever form of it that YOU do not use?
Wanna do away with all data centers and all AI? Then why are we discussing the subject on an internet based forum hosted by Google?
If we truly have had enough of "the richest companies" disregard for local communities/businesses then are we walking away from all social media, closing down our Amazon accounts, and throwing away the cell phones we stare at hour after hour after hour?
My point in playing the devil's advocate when it came to the data center in Lowell was to make the point - what are we all willing to give up in your battle against data centers/AI?
You say I don't have to sell you on the dangers of AI and then assert the "situation" in Lowell is "hardly worth discussing". 🫨 i'm shook...
This is one if not the largest "development" in Lowell's history!
You say, what are we all willing to give up? How about what are we willing to fight for? Truth. Transparency. Dialogue. Our democratic institutions. The preservation of our community for future generations.
Select elected officials signed Non-Disclosure Agreements with one of the largest Big Tech companies in the world and have been working for the last 12+ months to create a 425 agreement (Nov 2024) without public knowledge of the changed development plans, introduce zoning ordinance 2025-01Z (March 2025) to allow data centers in the I-PUD development zone and requested to rezone I-96 Planning Area to the least restrictive light industrial zoning (Oct 2025) designation for the benefit of the Big Tech billionaires over the local community.
The planning commission meeting from December was postponed and it was removed from the January agenda, so there has effectively been zero public comment, on the record related to this development, and you ask if it is worth discussing? Yes, it is...
A development agreement is required (Township), before a water and waste-water agreements (City) could be developed. So the City has "backed out" in the sense that they can't do anything until a development agreement is in place.
Within the Township, "the applicant has requested to table the pending application... until they are prepared to resume the Application approval process."
The "situation" in Lowell is literally just beginning, and the same situations are blitzing across Michigan, the midwest and United States over the last 2 months.
Yes, the internet, cloud storage and social media require data centers, but this is NOT what is driving the exponential increase in digital infrastructure and energy demand, IT IS AI, you don't seem to acknowledge this point.
AI is being force fed to the public, without oversight, without controls, without an option to opt out, without transparency of impacts, meanwhile the richest companies in the world benefit and Lowell and other small towns get stuck with the known and unknown impacts that will affect Lowell and the surrounding communities over the next 50 years, whether I use it or not.
Am I against all data centers? No. I am against AI data centers being secretly pushed into my town by a few people without the community's knowledge.
Am I against AI, I wasn't until it came knocking on Lowell's front door in November and I saw the pattern unfolding across the state where small towns were being steam rolled by the richest companies in the world with local elected officials signing NDA's. Now that I understand the REAL WORLD impact of the AI Digital Infrastructure and how it is being orchestrated across the country, yes I am against it. It costs outweigh its benefits for me, my family and my community.
We do not need to give up the internet, social media and give away our phones to take a stand against AI's implantation, but we sure as heck better understand the real-world impacts of blind AI adoption now and into the future and ask our children and community what they want...
https://lowellledger.org/articles/news/city-suspends-participation-in-data-center-project/
Just an FYI from the outset the City set limits to how much water it was willing or able to provide. If the demands of the data center exceeded that, it was NOT moving forward.