What is the economic impact of data centres?

How much of a boost do data centers give to the economy and local communities? I asked researchers about this now that there's one being proposed here in Nova Scotia. These things are not going to create a ton of jobs. It's just not how data centers operate. Everwind is promising its proposed data center in Point Tupper will mean about 115 permanent on-site operating jobs and about another 100 jobs to operate several wind farms that have been in the works, which could help power the facility. This academic, who co-authored a study on data center employment impacts for an American think tank, says those job projections line up with his findings. But he says not all the jobs may be for people in local communities. A lot of the people are specialists in data center management, and so they'll be people who are brought in from the outside. But there's security and maintenance and all of these things that will probably drop in the local community. For its part, Everwind says it would ideally fill all positions with local talent. The types of jobs to manage a data center are various trades, electrical, mechanical, data center operators, but those are people that need to be there on site. Another academic with the Georgia Institute of Technology researched hundreds of counties in the states, comparing jurisdictions that got their first data center in the last 20 years with similar ones that did not. He told me there were modest but real economic gains that build over time. After several years, employment is up by about 3.5% and wages by about 5% in the jurisdictions that have the data centers. Even though they employ few people relative to the size of the investment, there can be boosts from suppliers, new businesses, and people moving into an area. Everwind is forecasting hundreds of millions in municipal tax revenue over the life of the project, and there's more. We plan to have a binding community benefits agreement, which will be most impactful for the host communities. Money for this community development program would be separate from tax revenue, although Everwind has not given a specific dollar amount. The warden of Richmond County has said such a program could mean things like a new CT scanner for the local hospital. According to Everwind, local communities would have a say on how this money from the program is spent. There's huge backlash against data centers. Operators kind of realize that they need to kind of sweeten the pot and they can't be asking for too much. Wright says historically, concessions like tax breaks have offset many of the economic gains from a data center. Finance Minister John Lohr says the province has not ruled out providing incentives. He gave an example of what would be available for this kind of project. The company The company would be be eligible for a payroll rebate after a certain number of years if they fulfill the requirement of employee numbers. There's still a lot we don't know. Lohr says the province has not yet verified Everwind's economic benefit projections. Meanwhile, Wright says a lot of the newer massive data centers like the one being proposed in Nova Scotia are very different to the ones that we've seen before and that we don't really have an understanding of what data centers of this scale are doing to local communities. Andrew Lam, CBC News, Halifax.