Three-quarters of the American public have heard of datacenters, but they haven’t quite made their minds up yet about whether they approve of them or not.
A survey by the Pew Research Center finds that a quarter of adults have “heard or read a lot” about datacenters, while half have only heard a little about them.
The flip side is that a quarter of respondents claim to have heard nothing about them at all – presumably they don’t wonder how their cloud services are served up.
The survey was conducted earlier this year and involved 8,512 adult Americans.
Overall, it finds that people in the US mostly believe the IT industry’s server warehouses have a negative effect on the environment, energy costs and local communities, but that they are generally good for local jobs and local tax revenue.
Pew says 39 percent of respondents think datacenters are bad for the environment, compared with just 4 percent who believe they are actually beneficial.
When it comes to energy costs for consumers, 38 percent indicated they thought the AI hothouses had a negative effect. We are surprised this figure isn’t greater, considering recent reports that show demand from datacenters is contributing to higher energy bills, questions are being asked by US senators, and President Trump is creating a Ratepayer Protection Pledge to try and address the issue.
At the same time, more adults seem to believe that datacenters mostly have a positive impact on local jobs (25 percent of respondents) than feel their influence is negative, while 23 percent of Americans think they are good for local tax revenue compared with the 12 percent that say they are bad.
Ironically, the reverse appears to be the reality here. Good Jobs First, a non-profit body focused on corporate and government accountability, found that datacenter developers are benefiting massively from local subsidies in the majority of US states, and those states that do calculate their returns find they are losing money on the deals.
And while hyperscalers like to claim their facilities bring jobs to a region, almost all of the work pertains to building the site. Once operational, many server halls employ around 30 to 50 permanent positions, while larger facilities can employ up to 200 people.
When it comes to the vexed issue of political divides, Pew finds that respondents who were Democrat-leaning view the impact of datacenters more negatively than Republicans.
However, few Democrats or Republicans actually believe that server halls are mostly good for the environment, home energy costs and people’s quality of life.
Younger adults also have more negative views than older adults, with 54 percent of those under 30 agreeing that datacenters have a mostly detrimental effect on the environment, falling to just 26 percent for respondents aged 65 and over.
Attitudes also depend on the respondents’ knowledge of server farms. Those who say they have heard a lot about them are more likely to be male, in upper-income households and college graduates.
Those who have heard a lot about server halls are more likely to agree that they have a negative impact in all five areas the Pew researchers asked about.
The datacenter industry is well aware it has an image problem, as was discussed at last year’s Datacloud Global Congress in Cannes, France. Perhaps industry can take comfort from the fact that for those who know little about it, ignorance is bliss. ®
