That schedule is impossible. Given the amount of power data centers take, and the fact that the government is new to building them, the environmental review process and lawsuits will take years.
I agree in general, but equipment mainly due to lead times and not permit/etc times.
Remember it's federal land, so they can't be held to state permitting or building codes, etc, only what they choose to (IE if their agency adopted it explicitly)
Having seen lots of datacenters constructed over the years - it's tractable in terms of the bureaucracy parts if they want it to be - because they can mostly ignore them.
So for me it breaks down like:
Building construction, it could be done.
Power provision - hard to say without knowing the sites. some would be clear yes, some would be clear no. Probably more nos than yeses.
Filling it with AI related anything at a useful scale - no, the chips don't exist unless you steal them from someoene else, or you are putting older surplus stuff in.
I’m not an environmental lawyer, but you don’t think these will be subject to NEPA? It sounds like they’re trying to piggy-back off land that was made available for solar projects under an existing EIS, but it sounds that those decisions could be litigated.
Automobile manufacturers can bring a plant from foundation to production in under a year, it’s not that far-fetched. A datacenter is orders of magnitude less complex.
My understanding is that it's not the data center that's the problem, it's the energy required to run them. This is especially demanding with us rubbing AI over everything and using insane amounts of energy in the process.
Ie: making a new data center is easy. Making new power plants quickly - not so much. But hey, at least there's some renewed political will, better than nothing.
I don’t have sources to back it up, but am reasonably sure these factories consume even more energy than a datacenter, possibly in the GW range. Powering robots, welders, and all kinds of mechanical systems in addition to electronics is very power intensive.
As another data point, Apple has been doing 100% renewables for their DCs since 2014. A wind farm can definitely be built in months, and energy companies will always follow the money. Site selection will definitely take energy availability into account as well.
