Utah may host one of the world’s most colossal data centers, despite stark warnings from experts and fierce public backlash. Earlier this month, commissioners in Box Elder County signed off on the Stratos Project: a 40,000-acre data center stretching across the county’s Hansel Valley. It’s supposed to establish American AI dominance, but potentially at the expense of environmental damage and a strain on already overtaxed water supplies.
The Stratos Project, backed by Shark Tank investor and venture capitalist Kevin O’Leary, is projected to be more than twice the size of Manhattan and consume 9GW of power — almost double the state’s peak electricity demand in 2025. Its first phase is projected to cost more than $4 billion, according to Utah Money Watch. O’Leary positions it as a way for the US to become an AI superpower and bolster national defense by serving the government and “tech firm contractors.” “It shows the Chinese and the rest of the world we are not messing around,” he said during a Fox News interview last month.
The project has obtained approval from the county and Gov. Spencer Cox, but it must still obtain environmental and building permits. Construction is expected to take years, with no firm timeline in sight. Its path from concept to approval, however, was remarkably short. O’Leary met with Cox in January, where they seemingly discussed plans for the sprawling data center. Cox and Sen. Stuart Adams (R-UT) “rolled out the red carpet,” O’Leary said in a Facebook post on January 9th. “They’re really gonna accelerate policy in terms of getting permits.”
“You’re trying to cool hot radiators by blowing hot air over them.”
In March, O’Leary’s investment firm announced plans to build the center in partnership with real-estate developer West GenCo. As reported by The Salt Lake Tribune, the 62-square-mile campus mainly sits atop private property. But it also overlaps with Department of Defense land, including the Utah Test and Training Range, which sits under the control of the Military Installation Development Authority (MIDA). MIDA would get around $49 million in annual property taxes, The Salt Lake Tribune reports. Some of these funds would go toward updating Utah’s Hill Air Force Base and supporting state infrastructure and emergency services, according to the Box Elder County Commission.
Data centers have become a political flashpoint around the country. They put an enormous demand on the power grid, raising local electricity prices. They can also strain water supplies, with the largest centers using up to 5 million gallons per day. Their backup generators can produce air pollution and a constant humming noise. And the wave of new jobs promised by developers could be illusory.
The Utah campus will have an on-site power plant that’s supposed to keep it off the state’s electricity grid, according to an FAQ on Cox’s website. The plant will draw methane (often dubbed “natural gas”) from the Ruby Pipeline, which runs from Wyoming to Oregon. The nonprofit Utah Clean Energy estimates that the Stratos Project could consume 448 billion cubic feet of gas per year, about 1.5 times the amount used by the homes, businesses, and power plants in the state. Companies like Pacific Gas & Electric, Cascade Natural Gas, and Nevada Gold Mines use the Ruby Pipeline, which is currently at about 50 percent utilization, according to Rextag. It’s not clear what kind of impact the Stratos Project will have on the supply of gas or pricing.
It’s not just the massive energy consumption that’s concerning; it’s the blanket of heat that its usage could produce. Robert Davies, a physics professor at Utah State University, published a preliminary analysis of the data center’s potential impact, finding that it will have a total thermal load of 16GW — or “the equivalent of about 23 atom bombs worth of energy dumped into this local environment every single day.” Davies tells The Verge that cooling a thermal load this large could require around 400 acres with thousands of industrial-scale fans. “It’s also not very efficient for much of the year, because this is a high desert environment,” Davies says. “The air is thin, and it’s dry, and it’s hot. So you’re trying to cool hot radiators by blowing hot air over them.”
This setup could spread hot air in the desert valley surrounding the data center, potentially raising daytime temperatures by 2 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit and nighttime temperatures by 8 to 12 degrees Fahrenheit, according to Davies. Rising nighttime temperatures could have an “extreme” impact on the environment, Davies says, as temperatures will not be able to dip to the dew point, which creates condensation that desert ecosystems rely on. The desert could become even drier, making it harder for plants and animals to survive. Davies notes that his analysis is just an “estimate,” but says it signals the “scale of impact we can expect.”
The Stratos Project is also estimated to produce 30.2 million tons of carbon dioxide each year, increasing Utah’s carbon emissions by 55 percent, according to Utah Clean Energy.
Commissioners in Box Elder County promise the center will use a “closed-loop” water recycling configuration that won’t require constant refilling, and that it won’t divert water from homes, farms, or the nearby Great Salt Lake, which is estimated to have lost 73 percent of its water to agricultural uses, irrigation, and other purposes. But there are still questions about where it will draw from.
Initially, Stratos planned to use water from the Salt Wells Spring, which Bar H Ranch has historically used for irrigation, according to The Salt Lake Tribune. But after almost 4,000 objections from the public, Bar H Ranch and the developers pulled the application, nullifying the complaints that citizens paid $15 each to submit. The Stratos Project’s backers have since submitted a new application to draw from “an unnamed spring in the Hansel Valley,” according to KSL. They could benefit from a newly enacted water rights law that prevents state engineers from rejecting an application based on whether it would harm public welfare or “interfere with a more beneficial use of the water,” as reported by Axios.
So far, Utah officials have dismissed — and even derided — public outrage. During the Box Elder County Commission’s meeting to approve the data center, Commissioner Boyd Bingham grew frustrated with the protesters for interrupting them, saying, “For hell’s sake, grow up,” according to the Utah News Dispatch. Gov. Cox was similarly unmoved. “I’m so tired of our country taking years to get stuff done,” Cox said during his monthly news conference on PBS. “It’s the dumbest thing ever. We think that taking time makes things better or safer, it absolutely does not.” Meanwhile, O’Leary accused the opponents of his massive data center of being funded by China.
The battle against the Stratos Project isn’t over, though. A group of citizens have applied for a referendum that could allow a vote to reverse Box Elder County’s approval of the data center. It could become one of the biggest tests yet of whether multibillion-dollar investments can be overcome with rallies, petitions, and demands for accountability from local lawmakers.
