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QuixoticgeekonMastodon12h ago
9GW datacentre approved. I'm trying to get my head round the scale of this. The whole of the UK uses about 40GW of electricity. So this one facility is a quarter of the UK grid. In one location. I had to look up box elder county on Wikipedia. "Its territory includes large tracts of barren desert,". Right, so a datacentre that uses the same amount of electricity as a quarter of the UK. In a fucking desert. And that's before we even consider the CO2 emissions. Yikes.
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/kevin-o-learys-9-gw-utah-data-center-campus-approved
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Analysis Summary
Utah's MIDA approved a 9 GW data center project in Box Elder County for Kevin O'Leary's company — a facility that would consume as much electricity as roughly a quarter of the UK's total power demand, built in high desert terrain. The project runs entirely off its own natural gas-fed power generation (not drawing from the state grid), but the author is right to flag the CO2 implications: a 9 GW natural gas facility produces significant emissions, and the scale is genuinely enormous relative to regional power consumption. What's missing: the project hasn't yet secured a hyperscaler tenant (Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Meta are targets), Phase 1 is only 3 GW, and the facility is designed to eventually feed surplus power back to the grid — not simply consuming it all.
Claims Analysis (5)
“A 9GW datacentre has been approved”
Tom's Hardware confirms MIDA approved the Stratos project on April 26, 2026 for 9 GW capacity at full buildout.
“The UK uses about 40GW of electricity”
UK peak demand is ~50-60 GW, average load ~30-35 GW. The 40 GW figure is reasonable as a typical reference point but slightly high for average use.
“This one facility is a quarter of the UK grid”
9 GW is roughly 15-25% of UK average demand depending on time of day. 'Quarter' is reasonable shorthand but slightly imprecise.
“Box Elder County territory includes large tracts of barren desert”
Wikipedia description cited accurately. Box Elder County sits in high desert region of northern Utah.
“The datacentre uses the same amount of electricity as a quarter of the UK and is located in a desert”
Both facts confirmed: 9 GW capacity in Box Elder County desert location, per Tom's Hardware and local coverage.
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