Holyoke bans new data centers, praises existing green facility
Summary and headline written by AI from the source article. How we work
Holyoke, Massachusetts recently became the first city in the state to ban new data centers, but made an exception for the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center. Community members urged the city council to consider environmental impacts of data centers, leading to the new zoning ordinance.
The existing Holyoke facility, co-founded by universities including Harvard and MIT, operates on almost entirely carbon-free power and was built for energy efficiency.
It supports scientific research, such as genome sequencing and disease mapping, for universities across the region. The center’s success offers a possible model for environmentally responsible data center development, contrasting with concerns about water and electricity use, fossil fuel reliance, and noise pollution that have prompted restrictions in other cities. Holyoke’s facility benefited the city by revitalizing a previously neglected area, providing coding programs for children, and making payments in lieu of taxes.
Operators remediated a brownfield site and designed the center to minimize its environmental footprint, locating it in a city where 90% of the power comes from carbon-free sources. While the center uses between 20,000 to 30,000 gallons of water daily for cooling, it relies on outside air for eight months of the year and currently draws less energy than it is permitted, enough to power around 6,000 homes.
Governor Healey recently signed an executive order requiring state approval for new data centers and guidelines for clean energy use and community benefits.
