(The Center Square) – Requiring facilities to provide their energy generation for artificial intelligence data centers is supported by 8 in 10 North Carolinians, a new poll says.
Multiple proposals have been made in the General Assembly.
Equit. The Escalation of Electricity Demand Act, as House Bill 638 is also known, has languished since its introduction in the state House of Representatives’ Committee on Energy and Public Utilities. The proposal would “assign the cost of new data centers, electric vehicle charging stations, and associated electricity demands to those who benefit directly from these power supplies.”
The Rate Payer Protection Act, known also as House Bill 1002, would prohibit passing “any grid or energy costs incurred solely for serving data centers to rate payers and creating a special commission for data center planning.” It has rested since April 14 in the Rules Committee.
The survey from the Carolina Journal through Harper Polling released Thursday was conducted Sunday and Monday among 600 likely voters and carries a +/- 4% margin of error.
Respondents were strongly supportive (59.8%). Another 18.4% were somewhat supportive. Only 9.9% were opposed.
North Carolina has 92 data centers, according to the Data Center Map platform that tracks nationwide. And the list has done nothing lately but grow, with no project bigger than Amazon Web Services.
Perennially among the most wanted locations, North Carolina landed one of the Big Five in June when Amazon said it would invest $10 billion toward its Amazon Web Services data center supply chain. The global technology company, replete with e-commerce, digital streaming and online advertising, said a minimum of 500 jobs in high-tech cloud computing and artificial intelligence will come to an innovation campus in Richmond County along the South Carolina border.
Such jobs will be data center engineers, network specialists, engineering operations managers, security specialists, and other technical roles, Amazon said in a release. The location is expected to have 20 buildings of at least 200,000 square feet each.
A year ago, Digital Realty said it would bring a 400-megawatt campus to Charlotte.
Other projects of at least 300 megawatts are in Tarboro, Statesville, Catawba County, another in Charlotte, Kingsboro and Fayetteville.
