Energy Storage Solutions plans to break ground on a $19.2 billion, 900-megawatt data center in Kingsboro. Community organizer Janice Bulluck worries the developers are extolling the community benefits, while downplaying the cost.
“When you come in, and you present this, then make it sound as though it's the best thing since sliced bread — when we start really looking into this, and it didn't even come close,” Bulluck said.
Data centers like xAI’s facility in Memphis, Tennessee, have raised concerns among Edgecombe County residents about air and noise pollution. Tech billionaire Elon Musk, owner of xAI, deployed 35 unpermitted natural-gas turbines on-site to provide power behind-the-meter, news outlets report.
Bulluck and other community members spoke up during Monday’s county commission meeting. Their concerns varied and included doubts about the availability of natural gas to power the site, air pollution and water usage.
Bulluck also questioned the economic benefits the center would bring. The developers haven’t released the prospective tenants' names for the data center. The number of permanent jobs will depend on those tenants.
Energy Storage Solutions President Dan Shaffer anticipates the project paying a large amount of taxes, especially in a county with an $82 million budget.
“Once we build out our $19.2 billion project, the campus as a whole, the number is going to be about $75 million annually,” Shaffer said, referring to the taxes generated by the project during the first seven years.
Energy Storage Solutions plans to bring its own power
Energy Storage Solutions plans to power the data center onsite, or behind-the-meter.
“We're principally looking at natural gas right now,” Shaffer said. The site would include some battery storage to supplement the natural gas turbines that Energy Storage Solutions plans to build.
The plan requires at least 900 megawatts of capacity, but Shaffer plans to overbuild to provide redundancy in the event of repairs, building out 1,800 megawatts of primarily natural gas turbines — enough to power more than 1.5 million homes. For scale, state regulators recently approved Duke Energy’s plans for a natural gas plant in Person County totaling 2,720 megawatts.
Shaffer estimated that the data center would create about 1,000 permanent, “well-paying” jobs. This estimate comes with a grain of salt: The data center’s tenants would employ those workers, not Energy Storage Solutions.
“What we want to do is build and own and do a limited amount of management on the campuses,” Shaffer said. “So, when I'm picking a number of 500 or 1,000, these are all related to the data centers, and the payrolls will come through the data centers.”
The project could represent a significant source of revenue for the county. Shaffer estimated that the Kingsboro campus would generate $75 million on average during the first seven years.
Shaffer does not know how water the site would require. A closed-loop cooling system that recycles freshwater could significantly reduce water usage. In addition to the water used to cool the center’s hardware, natural gas turbines use about 2,800 gallons of water to generate one megawatt-hour of energy, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
The hog farm of the 2020s
This isn’t the community’s first rodeo. In the mid-1990s, Kingsboro residents mobilized against a 300-acre hog slaughterhouse. The 300-acre slaughterhouse would have operated 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Operations would have demanded 6 million gallons of water a day from the Tar River.
It also would have brought 2,000 new jobs to the area, but residents decided the environmental cost outweighed the economic benefit. Instead, home goods brand QVC opened a distribution center at the site, offsetting energy demand with a 1-megawatt onsite solar farm. The facility burned down in 2021.
“Data centers of the 2020s are like the hog farms and slaughterhouses of the 1990s, coming with the promise of much-needed funds for the county government while exposing the citizens of the surrounding community in Edgecombe County for serious environmental hazards,” said James Wrenn, a Leggett local, during Monday’s commission meeting.
Many residents said that while they oppose the data center, they are not against other industries moving into the neighborhood. The county still owns the land and many of the adjoining parcels.
“[The QVC distribution center] boosted the economy, and you had people living in the area that were employed,” Bulluck said. “The concern is that this data center would not provide that.”
