"In 2019, Washington adopted legislation requiring electric utilities to go carbon-neutral in a decade. Yet lawmakers continued to promote the growth of energy-guzzling data centers with generous tax incentives."
"In a vast stretch of Central Washington’s high desert, the farms and small towns of Grant County sit on nothing short of a gold mine.
Grant County’s utility district owns two public dams on the colossal Columbia River that are capable of powering more than 1.5 million homes. For decades, this sparsely populated county had enough clean hydroelectricity to meet its own power needs and sell the excess at a low cost across the Northwest.
Then wealthy companies, catering to the insatiable demands of our digital world, arrived in the county. Attracted by the cheap electricity, they built power-guzzling data centers — the warehouses filled with computer servers that back the modern internet. Local officials welcomed the industry’s economic potential.
But with demand soaring and the power from dams finite, Grant County has been forced to look to other sources of energy. The problem is so acute that the county is headed for a daunting choice in the next six years: violate a state green energy law limiting the use of fossil fuels or risk rolling blackouts in homes, factories and hospitals."
Lulu Ramadan and Sydney Brownstone report for the Seattle Times, with photography by Karen Ducey,
July 28, 2024. This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network.
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