In Reply to: Used fake name, but wasn't trying to hide anything posted by mh on October 02, 2026 at 11:14:04
When Republicans passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year, they knew Democrats would hit them for cutting rich people’s taxes, but they never expected a provision titled “Full expensing for certain business property” to blow up in their faces.
Democrats have latched on to the policy as one of several tax breaks in the new law benefiting data centers, and they’re using it for brutal attack ads amid a public opinion nosedive for the projects.
“He took thousands from one of the biggest data center developers in America. Days later, he voted to give them $70 billion in tax breaks,” a narrator gravely intones in a 30-second spot attacking Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.). “Now, Wisconsin families are paying his tab twice: Once for his massive tax giveaway to data centers, then again with higher utility bills.”
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BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!
There is another aspect about the impact of data centers which isn’t being discussed much. We have heard about the electric and water issues. Now it has come to my attention that data centers require a huge amount of diesel to be stored on site for their backup diesel generators. There are over 1400 data center sites being built or planned. Not all data centers have diesel back up. They are usually the smaller ones.
The backup generators are needed in case of an electric interruption from the grid. Just one facility QTS in Utah is going to store 2.6 million gallons of diesel in onsite tanks. Another site in Delaware is going to take 2.5 million gallons. This is a larger site and smaller sites will take less diesel. However with over 1400 sites the storage of diesel could very well reach over 1 billion gallons of diesel. That is a lot of diesel that is taken from the supply chain.
So what are the implications for the diesel supply. As supply shrinks will the price go up? Will there be shortages? And what happens in hurricane areas where the grid goes down for quite some time. Some of these facilities will consume over 800,000 gallons of diesel a day. At that rate does that area even have that much extra diesel on hand to resupply. Who gets priority? Citizens and trucking companies? Or data centers?