Comment Makes perfect sense (Score 4, Insightful) 27
Makes perfect sense to me. I don't know why more countries, particularly here in the USA, don't do more of this. If you want to add a new datacenter, you need to plan on how you will power it using 100% renewable power. You also need to either have a 100% recirculating water source, or if you're going to expend water directly for cooling, then you need to come up with a plan to replenish that water. E.g. buy replacement water from a desalinization plant. No plan = no permit.
To me this is simply logical. If you're going to dig a mine, you need to plan on how you're going to clean up the site when you're done. If you're going to dig an oil well, you need to plan on how you're going to seal it when you're done. And you need to post a bond for the amount of the capping/sealing/cleanup to an escrow account that earns interest equal to the cost of inflation. No digging wells, failing to cap them and letting them leak methane, then declare bankruptcy or sell your assists but not your liabilities to another company. No dumping your problems on the government or citizens. If you don't like it and don't want to build your datacenter here and prefer to build it somewhere else, no problem. Yes, it will raise the cost of doing business which will get passed on to the consumers. But now they're paying the fully loaded cost of the project, not part of it and then having it getting dumped on the government, which is just the people's money anyway, later.
