The rapidly expanding data center sector is quickly wearing out its welcome in populated areas due to the non-stop noise and voracious appetite for electricity and water that huge hyperscale server farms generate with their 24/7 operations.

Locations on the periphery of established data center clusters in the US are mounting a growing NIMBY backlash that has beaten back proposals to build new facilities in bucolic rural towns and near historic preservation sites—even in the leading global data center cluster in Northern Virginia.

Perhaps anticipating this trend, tech behemoths including Amazon, Apple, Google and Meta have for several years planted their flags in remote and sparsely populated regions in the US—including eastern and central Oregon—as they continue to build out mega-platforms for their web services and burgeoning cloud-computing empires.