“I won’t cause that much of a fuss.”
The property is located off South Lincoln Avenue and Sheridan Avenue in a residential area near commercial farmland. DataOne CEO Charles-Antoine Beyney told WHYY News that the company acquired the majority of the homes just a few hundred feet from the facility. DataOne employees will live in these homes.
Baney said residents’ concerns are overblown and argued that data centers pose fewer environmental problems than other types of facilities.
“I think data centers are something that doesn’t cause a lot of disruption,” he said. “If I were a big Amazon warehouse, it would cause 100 times more disruption because there would be hundreds of trucks coming and going all day long. And it would cause far more pollution than my facility.”
Originally planned as a 2.4 million square foot data center, the latest plans call for the AI factory to be less than 718,000 square feet.
The 350-megawatt facility will generate 85% of its electricity on-site using natural gas transported through existing pipelines. The remaining 15% will come from Vineland Municipal Power Company and Atlantic City Power. The site will also use 32 high-efficiency natural gas engines, five of which will be used for backup power generation, and six diesel generators for emergency power.
“I have two young children, so carbon emissions are a concern, especially with research into asthma and chronic health effects,” resident Landisini said.
Mr Baney said “state-of-the-art” pollution control technology would reduce emissions by 95%. The system also removes carbon dioxide through a carbon capture process, which is not required by state or federal law, he said.
Baney argued his operation would be relatively clean, citing the carbon footprint of cows, which emit methane through digestion.
“We have not contaminated more than 200 cows,” Baney said. “Imagine a small Amazon distribution center with 150 trucks. That’s about the amount of pollution that this data center is polluting.”
However, he said DataOne has a goal of achieving net-zero emissions.
The company is seeking approval for a 1.5 million gallon LNG storage tank to be used in the event pipeline service is interrupted. The Vineland Planning Commission had scheduled a public hearing on the company’s energy plan this week, but it was postponed to give the company time to share its plans with the public concerned about possible gas leaks and explosions, Baney said.
“We are of course following the strictest regulations to ensure it is 100% safe,” he said. “As you can imagine, if a big tank is dangerous, we’re not going to put tens of billions of GPUs and data next to it.”
