Given the amount of breathless coverage surrounding data center construction in Reno, you'd be forgiven for assuming the city was being overrun with them.

In January 2025, the Reno City Planning Commission approved construction of the Keystone Data Center — a 3.26-acre project located next to the train trench and a data center that was constructed in 1999 — but denied approval for the Webb Data Center. Later that month, the Reno City Council voted to override the planning commission and approved construction of the Webb Data Center, which will be an 82,000-square-foot facility on a 6-acre lot sandwiched between two delivery warehouses. A few months later, the council voted to approve construction of another data center — the Oppidan 5MW Data Center, which will be built less than a block from the Webb Data Center on a 7-acre parcel.

To put the scale of these developments into perspective, the Walmart on the corner of 7th Street and McCarran Boulevard in west Reno occupies more than 22 acres — three more acres than all of the proposed data center sites put together.

Since construction of the data centers was approved more than a year ago, and given that no new applications for data center construction have been considered by the city's planning commission in the meantime, one might therefore wonder why multiple city council members felt the need to publicly call for a moratorium during last month's council meeting.

Or why more than 150 people showed up for public comment.

Though it's undeniably true that data center construction is escalating in Northern Nevada, most new data centers in the region are being constructed in the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center east of Reno in neighboring Storey County, not in Reno's city limits. Of the 28 data centers listed in Reno on Data Center Map, only five are in the Truckee Meadows or the North Valleys, where most Washoe County residents live. Of those five, three have been in the region for years — one has been operating in a small industrial park south of the airport since 2008, one has been operating as a communications facility for more than 26 years, and one is located in the Wells Fargo building in downtown Reno and is presumably reselling the original data and power infrastructure from the building's construction in 1982.

In fact, the largest data center complex in Washoe County isn't in Reno at all. Originally built on a lot that was assessed at $1.1 million in 2012, Apple's data center complex north of the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center is now assessed at more than $143 million — more than 100 times what the property was taxed at during the Great Recession. Though Apple, like most large data centers in Nevada, receives several tax abatements — the Governor's Office of Economic Development approved more than $62 million in abatements for the company in 2024 — Apple still paid more than $4 million in taxes that year and paid more than $4.5 million in taxes in 2025.

By comparison, the most that parcel would have been taxed in 2012 is 2.7002 percent of its $1.1 million assessed value. That works out to $31,064.21 — a fraction of what the county collects from the property today.

In light of the city's budget woes, Reno would be quite fortunate if it received a similar return on investment on any of the properties within its jurisdiction. One might almost wonder why city leaders would be calling for a moratorium on data centers instead of begging for their addition to the city's beleaguered tax rolls.

Almost.

Without repeating everything I wrote about data centers in January 2025, the issue with data centers isn't the data centers themselves. Like all light industrial uses, they consume water and energy and that consumption needs to be balanced against the ability of their infrastructure to deliver those services. Unlike most light industries, however, builders of data centers are quite willing to invest in on-site power generation for their facilities — a concession that, if encouraged through state or local laws, could help ensure that data center energy needs don't unnecessarily compete against residential needs.

Like all light industrial uses, data centers can also generate noise and pollution, especially when developers build hundreds of acres of them. This, of course, is not unique to data centers — hundreds of acres of any light industrial use will generate nontrivial amounts of noise and pollution, especially once dozens or hundreds of semitrucks start hauling materials in and merchandise out. It is, however, currently much easier to replace the noisy diesel- or natural gas-powered on-site generators used by data centers with comparatively quiet solar panels or windmills than it is to convert fleets of trucks from internal combustion engines — plus data centers draw far fewer visits from truckers than most light industries in any case.

It's also undeniable that, like many other sectors in this state, data centers are eligible for various tax breaks that should probably be revisited during the next legislative session. Fair enough. Even here, however, the trade-offs are surprisingly nuanced. A 2023 analysis commissioned by the Data Center Coalition found that though Nevada data centers only employed 4,550 people, they generated $290 million in state and local tax revenues — meaning that each job, and each corresponding constituent working that job, generated nearly $64,000 in tax revenue. 

To put that into perspective, the Reno city budget is $1.03 billion, or roughly $3,900 per resident. Each data center job, then, generated enough tax revenue to provide services for 15 other residents.

Is it wise to base county and municipal budgets on tax streams that treat the people they're designed to serve as inconvenient cost centers that consume police, fire, roads, parks and other services? Great question. Until someone in the Legislature asks that question in session and convinces a majority of their colleagues to do something about it, however, we have the tax system we have — and in Nevada's tax system, big expensive buildings full of expensive sales tax- and property tax-generating equipment that draw few constituents to serve are obvious cash cows for otherwise revenue-strapped local governments.

Despite all of that, the real reason some city residents are calling for a moratorium — one which some council members only started echoing during an election year — is the same reason Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) are calling for a "reasonable pause" on data center construction. It's also the same reason why OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's house was attacked with a Molotov cocktail and, two days later, was shot at. That reason is obvious — objecting to data centers is the only way many people have to lash out at an increasingly sociopathic tech industry.

Which, again, is fair enough. Speaking as someone who works in information technology, if I hear one more sales representative tell me that "artificial intelligence won't take your job — the person who knows how to use artificial intelligence will," I might submit some public comment in opposition to a data center or two myself.

Even so, it's important to remember that most of the winners of the data center construction boom aren't tech broligarchs min-maxing their nootropic stack so they can produce 7 percent more efficient vibe code prompts.

For example, data center construction is finally pushing investors to start reinvesting in power generation. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the United States generated 4,157 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity in 2007 — the year the iPhone was invented. Despite subsequent development and adoption of smartphones, electric vehicles and other demands on our electricity supply, however, total annual national power generation didn't exceed that 2007 figure until 2018, only to decline below the 2007 peak the following year. In 2022, however — the year ChatGPT was released — that stagnation and decline finally stopped. Since then, national power generation has grown by 272 billion kWh.

As that additional 272 billion kWh was added to the national grid, 716 billion kWh — yes, more than double the overall growth in national power generation — was generated using renewable energy, such as wind and solar power plants. 

How is that possible? Simply put, data center-funded renewable energy is displacing other forms of energy generation. In 2007, all fossil fuel-based power generation facilities — including coal, natural gas and petroleum — generated 2,998 billion kWh of electricity. Today, that total is now only 2,575 billion kWh — a figure which, despite alarming reports suggesting fossil-fueled power generation facilities are being reactivated to meet increased demand from data centers, is still only 62 billion kWh more than the amount generated from such sources in 2022 when ChatGPT was released. 

Though permitting of renewable energy projects stalled following the adoption of new regulations designed to "level the playing field" between renewable and carbon-based energy by requiring cabinet secretary-level review of all wind and solar energy projects, a recent preliminary injunction issued by the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts may push federal regulators to stop starving data centers of cheap and efficient renewable energy.

Regardless of how or whether investments in artificial intelligence turn out, this increase in renewable energy capacity will benefit all Nevadans in the long run, especially as fossil fuel prices continue to rise following the joint U.S.-Israeli bombing of Iran.

More immediately, meanwhile, 80 percent of the 4,000 unionized electricians in Northern Nevada are employed on data center projects, as are thousands of plumbers, pipefitters and other construction workers. Those figures don't include those employed on building new power plants or supporting infrastructure, nor those working in Nevada's Lithium Loop to build the battery infrastructure needed to support large-scale renewable energy production. Though some of these well-paying jobs may prove to be temporary if demand for data centers relax, many of them — especially in the renewable energy and battery industries — will not be.

As we obsess over the costs of building and adopting artificial intelligence, it's important to remember that, regardless of how any of us feel about the value or effectiveness of artificial intelligence, there are benefits as well. Before we push our politicians to demand moratoriums this election season, let's double-check our math and confirm that sacrificing those benefits — along with the financial well-being of the workers, families and local governments depending on them — are worth the costs.

David Colborne ran for public office twice. He is now an IT manager, the father of two sons and a recurring opinion columnist for The Nevada Independent. You can follow him on Mastodon @[email protected], on Bluesky @davidcolborne.bsky.social, on Threads @davidcolbornenv or email him at [email protected]. You can also message him on Signal at dcolborne.64.