Lawmakers heard it all at a Wednesday meeting of the Water and Natural Resources Committee in Artesia that stretched beyond its anticipated end time as state legislators put in their two cents on Project Jupiter and similar projects around the state.
State Economic Development Department division Director Mark Roper said data centers had been a “financial boon” for the state. He pointed to Meta’s longstanding facility in Los Lunas, which he said grew the population, increased tax revenue and brought benefits to other businesses in the area. He highlighted massive potential boosts to the region and state as a result of Project Jupiter, if brought to fruition.
“The economic benefits are real,” Roper said.
Ben Shelton, Cabinet deputy secretary for the Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department, agreed with Roper that the state is ripe with opportunity when it comes to data centers. Since he has lived in New Mexico, Shelton said, he “has not seen this amount of money focused here on us.”
But Shelton brought up potential tradeoffs as well.
The end use for data centers can vary the energy intensity widely, Shelton said, with artificial intelligence being especially “power thirsty.” Around the nation, utilities in areas where many data centers operate can experience grid strain.
It’s important to keep in mind how to protect communities from increasing rates as large customers add demand to the grid, Shelton said.
“As you drop these big ... boulders into the stream, how you’re going to defray the cost and protect people from the costs of adding those onto the grid, it’s an important thing to think about,” Shelton said.
Microgrids for data centers could adjust those consumer risks, said Stacy Tellinghuisen, deputy director of policy development for Western Resource Advocates’ Clean Energy Department, but it depends on how the microgrid is established. Project Jupiter plans to set up a natural gas-powered microgrid for its operations.
Tellinghuisen proposed several policy initiatives, including ensuring data centers have financing to use clean energy and mandating transparent water use reporting.
“These are really well-financed and well-capitalized companies,” Tellinghuisen said. “I think there’s a lot of opportunity to leverage that investment to advance our clean energy goals across the region.”
Water has been a major concern for some residents of Doña Ana County as the project has progressed, although Project Jupiter’s developers say it will use a cooling system that requires just one initial input of water, rather than evaporative cooling systems that need constant refill.
Daisy Maldonado, director of Empowerment Congress of Doña Ana County, a group that has sued the county over the process of approving the industrial revenue bonds for the project, referenced longtime water struggles in the area. The Camino Real Regional Utility Authority struggled with high arsenic levels after three of four arsenic treatment plants were found to be offline, and the county is in a drought.
Tanya Trujillo, deputy state engineer, said for facilities like data centers, water use can depend on two factors: how they’re powered and how they’re cooled.
In general, air cooling requires less water but more energy, Trujillo said. Water-cooled projects require more water but less energy.
Although time was limited for legislator comment, Reps. Angelica Rubio, D-Las Cruces, and Micaela Lara Cadena, D-Mesilla, both criticized the process of approving the project.
While Rep. Matthew McQueen, D-Galisteo, said he saw both sides of the data center debate and didn’t have strong feelings on Project Jupiter, he said looking from the outside the approval process made him “uneasy.”
Although the panel was focused on Project Jupiter, the conversation turned more broadly to data centers in the state.
Sen. Candy Spence Ezzell, R-Roswell, brought up a planned data center near the boundary of Chaves and Eddy counties, expressing concerns about the potential impacts on water rights and agriculture.
“Whenever you put the farmers and ranchers out of business, what are you going to do?” Ezzell said. “Then folks get the data bytes and eat them. I hope everybody gets their bellies full.”
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