Aurora has a responsibility to protect its residents and resources when it comes to approving all kinds of developments, something the city has mostly done prudently in the past.

The drive to open more data centers in and near Aurora is disrupting that pragmatism.

Before approving another data center, city lawmakers and leaders must make clear they understand what these sprawling, power-hungry facilities will mean for the community. Right now, they can’t do that. That is reason enough to suspend further approvals until the facts are established.

This isn’t an argument for outright rejecting data centers. It’s a case against making consequential decisions without the information needed to make them wisely.

The proposed Trident data center in northeast Aurora illustrates the problem. At roughly 860,000 square feet, it would become Colorado’s largest, with an expected computing capacity of 334 megawatts, which is more than twice that of the state’s current largest facility. Its proposed location, however, in a zoning district that currently permits data centers just by putting one there, means the project can advance administratively without a public hearing, absent a requested variance.

We haven’t seen anything nefarious about that evolution of how these centers fit into the industrial growth of the city, primarily because they’re so much like every other light-industrial use the city works to attract to make Aurora its home.

The problem could be, or may not be, what the city, the state and even the nation doesn’t know or understand about the short-term or long-term consequences of these centers.

Some facts are beyond dispute. Data centers consume enormous amounts of electricity, and their collective environmental footprint is growing. An Associated Press report on a United Nations University study found that global data centers consumed 448 trillion watt-hours of electricity last year, producing roughly 208 million tons of carbon dioxide. The report data center electricity consumption will more than double by 2030 as artificial intelligence expands.

Those global figures, however, don’t establish the local consequences.

Aurora and Colorado are connected to a large, regional electrical grid. How much additional demand these facilities will place on regional supplies and what their provable effect is on power-company customer bills just isn’t clear, or the answers aren’t coming from independent, verifiable sources.

An Xcel Energy official told the Sentinel recently that these centers “pay their own way,” at least when it comes to passing along infrastructure costs to residential and other business customers. The state can’t confirm that, and it’s no secret that the public utilities commission in Colorado, and elsewhere, allows power companies to pass infrastructure costs onto customers, rather than dig into company profits.

If the evidence establishes that households and other ratepayers are unfairly subsidizing data center operations, the Colorado Public Utilities Commission, state lawmakers and Congress must act to protect the public from what is essentially corporate abuse.

The environmental questions are similarly unsettled.

Residents have legitimate concerns about noise, air pollution, emergency generators and water consumption. But the impacts will vary by facility and technology. The Trident developer says its project will use closed-loop cooling, a less water-intensive approach, and the center would use battery storage alongside 28 emergency generators.

Aurora, however, has also recently approved a ban on evaporative cooling, which, although good for saving water, means cooling must be accomplished using even more electric energy.

The city needs vetted, site-specific evidence to distinguish genuine hazards from speculation, and to establish enforceable protections where risks to neighborhoods or the community exist.

Water deserves particular scrutiny in a city and state where supplies are already under extreme pressure. This is a city that unwisely permitted a huge drinking water bottling plant to open and now must lean against the company for just doing business.

Similarly, Aurora can’t discard the value these data centers have or promise. Artificial intelligence and digital infrastructure may offer substantial benefits, although their regional economic and public value remains difficult to measure.

Aurora has recently welcomed other dubious industrial enterprises, including a nicotine-pouch manufacturing plant, even as officials seek to restrict retail sales of similar products in Aurora neighborhoods. Police also embrace Flock cameras and license-plate readers, technologies that depend on substantial digital infrastructure, provided by data centers.

That doesn’t mean every proposal deserves approval. Trident could qualify for up to $38.9 million in city tax incentives over 10 years, subject to employment and salary requirements. But whether such a huge subsidy provides a net gain to all of Aurora is unclear because of the lack of solid, independent data.

Aurora should pause new data center approvals for at least six months while it commissions a transparent, independent assessment of electricity costs, water consumption, environmental effects, public benefits and enforceable safeguards. 

Collaborating with the state or other governments in the region would be an equally wise move, but forgoing a comprehensive review would not.

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