Click the link to read the article on The Denver Post website (Elise Schmelzer). Here’s an excerpt:
June 5, 2025
On Aurora’s eastern edge, where the bustle of metro Denver fades to farms, the first building of what will become the state’s largest data center stands behind a wrought-iron fence. In another section of the 65-acre campus, front-end loaders are at work preparing for the foundation of another building. Seventeen miles west, in a dusty industrial nook of northern Denver, workers on a recent day scattered across a huge pit dug into the earth to lay the foundation for that city’s newest data center. The two construction sites offer a glimpse into what a predicted boom in Colorado’s data center industry may look like as the industry expands exponentially nationwide to meet the needs of Americans’ increasingly online lives — and to provide the computing power demanded by artificial intelligence. The potential growth — and repeated proposals for state incentives to expedite that development — are creating concerns that the centers’ required power and cooling needs could keep Colorado from meeting its climate goals and drain already-stretched water resources…
Already, an “absolute arms race” among data center developers has prompted the state’s largest electricity provider to stop offering lower rates for the facilities, according to Xcel Energy executives. If all of the data centers’ requests to the utility for power were to come to fruition, Xcel would need to double its current generating power. When completed, the Aurora data center will be a 160 megawatt hyperscale facility that, at max capacity, could consume as much power as 176,000 homes. The northern Denver data center, once completed in the Elyria-Swansea neighborhood, could use a maximum of 805,000 gallons of water a day for cooling — the same as 16,100 Denverites’ average daily indoor water use. Regulators, environmental advocates and data center representatives all say Colorado faces a critical moment: Can the state balance the desire from some government leaders for the economic development brought by data centers with Colorado’s climate goals and water realities? And can it do that while protecting electric customers from bearing the costs of the burgeoning industry?