https://www.thenational.scot/politics/26619746.data-centres-new-student-flats---worried/
Extract from Robin McAlpine in Sunday National. May appear shortly in his blog away from paywall.
Data centres are the new student accommodation.
After all, in the worse case scenario they own the land and can release its value again during the next cycle. These are not really buildings (student accommodation) at all, these are speculative financial assets parked on valuable land to increase the wealth of those who have money in equity funds.And now, what is the land that has suddenly become valuable? Land on which you might get planning permission for a data centre, particularly if you deliberately confuse politicians and the public about what data centres are and what benefit they bring.
Data centres have as much to do with propelling their host nation forward into an 'AI future' as student flats do with promoting the study of Aristotle. Which is to say far from feeding these goals they are parasites sucking the life out of them.
The real gold rush in data centres is that no-one wanted to build anything on the land beforehand. You put data centres near the poorest community you can where no-one wanted to build luxury flats or office blocks or student accommodation anyway.
But they are built on the basis of a much, much riskier business model than student flats. No-one yet knows how to actually pay for data centres without raising the cost of AI way above what it can be sold for. Data centre projects are being cancelled all over the world because the finances are ropey.
So this is our question to you – having given away your land, water and energy for nothing, what do you do if and when these data centres go bankrupt? You can turn student flats into normal flats, but what are you going to do with enormous empty mega-warehouses?
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