Amazon has announced it is planning to spend $20 billion to build two data center complexes in Pennsylvania.
According to the company, one data center will be built next to northeastern Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna nuclear power plant, where it intends to get its power. The other will be in Fairless Hills at a logistics campus — the Keystone Trade Center — on what was once a U.S. Steel mill.
Amazon said that the data center will get its power through the electricity grid. The company claims that the planned investment will establish multiple innovation campuses, create 1,250 jobs, and support new workforce development training programs and local community projects.
READ: Amid surging energy demands from AI and data centers, Big Tech turns to nuclear power (November 29, 2024)
At a news conference in Berwick, Pennsylvania, Governor Josh Shapiro called this investment the largest private sector investment in Pennsylvania’s history. He also said this investment is “just the beginning” because his administration is working with Amazon on additional data center projects in Pennsylvania.
“For too long, we’ve watched as talents across Pennsylvania got hollowed out and left behind,” Shapiro said at the news conference. “No more. Now is our time to rebuild those communities and invest in them. This investment in Pennsylvania starts reversing that trend.”
Shapiro’s administration said it will spend $10 million to pay for training classes and facilities at schools, community colleges and union halls to meet the skills demand for the data centers. Amazon also qualifies for Pennsylvania’s existing sales tax exemption on purchases of data center equipment, such as servers and routers, an exemption most states offer.
The data center planned to be built near the Susquehanna nuclear power plant has drawn federal scrutiny. Tech giants are increasingly looking to strike deals with power plant owners to plug in directly, and this has raised concerns over whether diverting power to higher-paying customers will leave enough for others and whether it’s fair to excuse big power users from paying for the grid.
The majority owner of the Susquehanna nuclear power plant Talen Energy sold its data center and the land adjacent to the plant to Amazon last year for $650 million in a deal to eventually provide 960 megawatts of electricity, likely at a premium. This comes to 40% of the output of one of the nation’s largest nuclear power plants, or enough to power more than a half-million homes.
Amazon is planning to replace this data center with its own, larger facility. However, the power-supply arrangement between Talen and Amazon — called a “behind the meter” connection — has been held up by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in the first such case to come before the agency.
Amazon has committed to about $10 billion apiece to data center projects in Mississippi, Indiana, Ohio and North Carolina since 2024, as it ramps up its infrastructural projects in order to face competition from other tech giants.