How Big of a Problem Is Data Center Noise?

This week’s conversation is with Ross Marchard, executive director for the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, a center-right advocacy group that focuses on what it sees are onerous policies potentially hindering responsible collection and use of tax dollars. TPA’s position on AI clearly skews pro-free market, as they’ve recently defended Anthropic from Trump administration attacks. TPA also recently took on the mantle of defending data centers from noise complaints, publishing a paper on Tuesday “debunking myths about data centers being excessively noisy.” The paper references various analyses of data centers by state legislators and local regulators to argue that claims the sector is generally noisy are false.

I asked TPA’s executive director to chat with me about why and how the organization will try to quell these fears. The conversation was really interesting so I decided to share it with you in full, sans light editing for clarity and consistency.

What prompted you to write this report?

Obviously, data center projects have been getting so much media attention. With that attention there’s an outsized share of misinformation in coverage of these data center projects, and politicians have irresponsibly spread this misinformation to try and enact moratoria and heavy-handed restrictions on these projects

TPA wanted to get the truth out. Make sure local residents living alongside these data centers have access to all the information they need. Make sure this misinformation is countered.

Before we get into the noise aspect, how is this focusing on “taxpayer protection”?

Sure, well, great case in point is Loudon County. They’ve embraced data centers and look what’s happened, they take in a billion dollars a year in revenue from these data centers and it’s allowed them to lower property taxes. You see a wider pattern across communities. They rake in a tremendous amount of tax revenue and increasingly common well-paying jobs, six-figure blue collar jobs that are a direct result of allowing data centers into communities.

I know you’re based in D.C., near Loudon County. I went to a data center in Sterling, Virginia, in that county, and it was especially noisy. Sort of a worst case scenario on that. Your report talks about misinformation around noise and data center – where is the misinformation happening on this issue?

We saw a recent court case out of New Jersey that alleges data centers generally are as loud as helicopters. Look, anything is possible for a particular project. But what we can say based on our analysis of the data, studies and sound impact assessments, and analyses by state and local governments is that this isn’t the case for the vast majority of data centers.

No use of land is going to be sound-free. I live right on Georgia Avenue in Washington, D.C., so I know noise. But everything we analyzed showed data centers and energy generation on site are going to make some noise but not enough to be harmful to human health. Often it’s no louder than the typical conversation between two people.

Speaking of Loudon County, though, I can point to an example of a project I myself visited that was I’m sure welcomed at first on tax revenue grounds. Now people seem to regret that decision.

As someone trying to address those who are concerned, is it helpful for you to really just call this concern rooted in misinformation? Is this really going to be potent when projects like the one in Sterling exist?

First and foremost, it’s very important to listen to people and their concerns. If folks are living alongside a data center and say they’re hearing loud noises, that warrants investigation. But it’s also important to look at the full array of evidence and we’ve done that. So far, it does not appear to be the case based on the overwhelming amount of evidence that is publicly available that data centers use a lot of water, use inordinate amounts of electricity, or are loud in a way that disrupts human health.

What do you think the policy solutions are to address these noise concerns? How do you listen to people, without going into overgeneralization, as you put it?

People tend to point out the loudest data centers are the ones with on site energy generation. If you ask the operators of data centers and the companies building data centers, they’ll tell you more often than not the reason they’re putting generation on site because the utility permitting process takes far too long. That’s the result not necessarily of utility regulations but state regulations foisted upon utilities. So you have to look at everything from state regulation to grid operation regulation. If you make the process easier for data centers to get hooked up to the grid, you’ll see less on site energy generation, and a lot of the noise complaints will go away.

So from your standpoint, a solution to the noise complaint is that it should be easier to hook up to the grid?

Yes. If you allow data centers to get hooked up to the grid, you’ll see fewer diesel generators and that’ll mean fewer noise complaints.

Now, I want to be clear, the vast majority of data centers with noise complaints – those are usually because of on-site energy generation – are not unduly noisy. If you want to cut down on those complaints, what makes the most sense is to make it easier for data centers to hook up.

Fun question to close: what was the last song you listened to?

“Yellow” by Coldplay.

Are you listening to “Yellow” while you’re writing about data centers?

I listen to the song sometimes when I’m writing about data centers. It’s also a very good somber reflection song, which is a pretty common sentiment amongst millennials.