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Purdue researcher briefs Hancock County advisory committee on data centers’ trade-offs and questions to ask developers
Summary
Roberto Gallardo, an associate professor at Purdue University, told the Hancock County advisory committee that hyperscale data centers present major energy, water, noise and land-use questions but can be shaped through strong community benefit agreements and negotiated terms; he urged transparency and asked communities to list key questions for developers.
Roberto Gallardo, an associate professor at Purdue University, told the Hancock County advisory committee that hyperscale data centers are a rapidly growing and high-stakes development type that local governments must treat differently from past manufacturing investments.
Gallardo said the scale of corporate investment in data centers is enormous and cited U.S. figures for 2024 to illustrate the point: “In 2024 alone, $241,000,000,000 are being invested by the top five tech companies in data centers,” and he noted a commonly cited figure for data-center electricity consumption in the U.S.: “183 terawatts, per hour ... that’s roughly equivalent to 17,000,000 households.” He cautioned the numbers are U.S. averages and will vary by project.
Gallardo framed the core trade-offs communities face: heavy electricity demand and grid upgrades (he referenced Indiana legislation HEA 1007 that asks that much of grid upgrade costs be paid by the developer), potential water use and noise impacts, e-waste from frequent hardware turnover, and changes to rural land character. He described mitigation tools including active demand-response agreements (which can let a data center reduce load during peak hours), closed-loop cooling to cut water use, and community benefit agreements (CBAs) that can specify local hiring, investments in schools or workforce training, public dashboards for transparency, and even revenue-sharing mechanisms.
On jobs, Gallardo said data centers create many construction jobs but typically fewer permanent operations jobs than traditional manufacturing; local gains depend heavily on what a negotiated CBA requires for local hiring, training, or community investment. On decommissioning, he warned facilities’ physical shells often remain while electronics are upgraded every two years, and CBAs can include clauses addressing facility exit and e-waste responsibility.
Committee members asked detailed follow-up questions about how active demand-response plans would be enforced, whether closed-loop water strategies could avoid drawing from local supplies, the feasibility of communities negotiating profit-sharing or stock-like arrangements, and whether regional coordination is practical. Gallardo recommended strong, explicit CBAs and cited Loudoun County, Virginia and Southeast Wisconsin as case studies for negotiated revenue and regional approaches.
Gallardo closed by urging committee members to continue education and to consider technical assistance programs; a member suggested Purdue could help develop a local technical assistance program for data-center readiness. The committee then discussed asking members to email their top concerns to staff and to include public comment at the next meeting.
