Maryland data center conference gets caught up in power line controversy
Dozens of noisy protesters greeted the business leaders, elected officials, union members and other interested parties who were gathered at Frederick Community College Thursday for a conference on data centers in Maryland.
The demonstrators were there to express outrage over a proposed power transmission project that would run from a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania to Northern Virginia, the biggest hub for data centers in the world.
It’s just the latest public display of opposition to the power line over the past several weeks, which has inspired a flash mob protest movement in Frederick, Carroll and Baltimore counties that continues to grow, as landowners fear their property could be seized or chopped up to make way for the power lines.
“Get off the public grid!” the protesters chanted as the 300-plus conferencegoers walked through the campus on their way to and from a catered Mexican lunch. Some of the rhetoric was considerably harsher.
“How about you donate your farms for this s—?” one man yelled at passers-by. “They [protesters] could have their homes seized so these people can make money.”
Leaders of the Maryland Technology Council, which organized the daylong session, had anticipated the ruckus. They briefed conference attendees on protocols and strategies for coping with the protesters and insisted that the proposed power line project is not directly connected to the Quantum Loophole data center campus, which is in the early stages of development in Frederick County.
“That transmission line is not part of any proposed data center in Maryland,” said Kelly Schulz, the former state lawmaker and Hogan administration Cabinet member who is CEO of the tech council. She noted that the Quantum Loophole project was on the books well before the proposed transmission line became publicly known, and added: “We respect the First Amendment rights of our fellow Marylanders.”
The tech council and other interest groups also put out statements as the conference was getting under way, saying much the same. But the demonstrators weren’t buying it.
“That’s pretty disingenuous,” said Steve Black, a Frederick County tree farmer who was one of the protest leaders. “It doesn’t comport with reality.”
Black said that in seeking bidders to build the proposed transmission line, PJM, the regional grid operator, asserted that an increasing number of data centers would be a drain on the grid.
Data centers house the critical infrastructure that stores and manages the data serving the internet. They are becoming increasingly common as consumer and corporate demand for data grows exponentially.
“We view data center development as the principal threat to land conservation,” Black said.
Even if the proposed power line is not directly related to Quantum Loophole, it’s clear that the regional power grid, which is already on the verge of being overloaded, is going to need more energy transmission and distribution sources to accommodate the anticipated dramatic growth of the data center industry in Maryland.
That point was repeatedly hammered home during the conference, which was sponsored by an array of tech companies, along with trade unions whose members could benefit from the construction and maintenance of data centers.
“This industry is the hottest vertical in the universe,” said Brian Hatmaker, the president of STULZ USA, a Frederick-based company that makes air technology systems for the data centers. “There’s nothing growing like data centers.”
One demonstrator, David Arndt, said state and local policymakers have so far only given data centers incentives instead of laying down aggressive regulations that will guarantee environmental and consumer protections.
“We’re not saying we’re against data centers,” said Arndt, co-chair of the Climate Justice Wing of the Maryland Legislative Coalition, a statewide progressive group. “We’re just saying let’s put guardrails around them.”
While Quantum Loophole executives tried to talk to some of the protesters during the lunch hour, Rick Weldon, president of the Frederick County Chamber of Commerce, later said some of the demonstrators at the community college Thursday didn’t have access to all the relevant information — and that some would be tough to persuade.
“Frankly, no matter what the subject, they’re going to hold up a sign and yell at you because they don’t want anything to change,” he said.
Beyond the high-profile protest, inside the two community college buildings where the tech council conference was taking place, there was widespread agreement that the future is bright for the data center industry in Maryland.
Gov. Wes Moore (D) has made growing the industry in the state a major economic development priority of his administration — a point reinforced by the presence of his legislative affairs director, Eric Luedtke, at Thursday’s conference. Earlier this year, the General Assembly passed a Moore bill designed to streamline the environmental approval process for data centers.
“It’s an important investment to undergird our state economy,” Luedtke said.
The Quantum Loophole project, on a 2,100-acre site in Buckeystown that once housed an aluminum smelter, is the biggest data center development under way in Maryland — and is being touted as a model for similar projects in the state that are being proposed or discussed. It is expected to provide hundreds of construction jobs as it’s being built out and will eventually bring two dozen data centers to the property.
But Quantum Loophole proponents say the development will also serve to conserve undeveloped land, and it’s anticipated that at least part of the property will be used for new hiker and biker trails. That’s partially due to the fact that Frederick County has developed a master plan offering guidelines for data center construction, speakers said Thursday — and stands in contrast to what happened just across the Potomac River in Loudoun County, Virginia, where 300 data centers were plopped willy-nilly throughout the community, alongside strip malls and housing developments.
Yet Maryland officials and business leaders also look across the river and see enormous economic potential in data centers.
Frederick is the epicenter of data center development right now, Schulz said, “because it boasts the right combination of assets” — including the availability of land, favorable zoning, proximity to the data center technology in Northern Virginia, and proximity to Washington, D.C. and federal installations in the region.
But the rest of the state is also ready to benefit, data center advocates argue.
Dan Golding, chief technology officer for the Appleby Strategy Group, a data center infrastructure provider based in Ashburn, Virginia, said public schools in Loudoun County have gone from “fairly mediocre” to the best in the state in just a few years.
“The school system is fully funded,” he said. “When they need something, they get the money they need. That’s not a coincidence. Money did that. Data center money did that.”
That assertion buttresses proponents’ arguments on the efficacy of data centers.
During the conference, speakers included tech company and construction company executives, union leaders, workforce development experts, business advocates and policymakers. But Sen. Karen Lewis Young (D-Frederick), who attended the daylong conference, noted that environmentalists and other critics of the Quantum Loophole project were not invited to speak, and she remains a skeptic about the data centers’ potential. Young is one of three lawmakers who voted against Moore’s data center bill in this year’s legislative session.
“Clearly, the industry is on the defensive,” she said.