A British company wants to build its first U.S. data center in Lansing, leaving many residents asking a simple question: why here? The question is part of WKAR’s week-long series exploring data centers and the controversy surrounding them.
Earlier this month, Deep Green publicly announced it is proposing a two-story, 24 MW data center in a parking lot between South Cedar and South Larch streets.
The company says it’s not like other data center operators. WKAR News spoke with Deep Green's CEO, Mark Lee. He said the Lansing facility will be “an ultra efficient, high density data center.”
It’s more environmentally-friendly compared to conventional facilities and will be the first of its kind in the United States.
“Part of our genetics since we started was not only that data centers can be done better, that they must be done better, and they should be for an asset to the community, not something that takes,” Lee said.
But Lansing residents worry that Deep Green’s eco-consciousness is “too good to be true” and a form of “green washing” -- when companies mislead consumers about the environmental benefits of a product.
What are Deep Green’s plans for Lansing?
The Lansing data center will be Deep Green’s first location in the United States.
The company is partnering with the Lansing Board of Water and Light. Its data center would fit into the existing energy grid, meaning the utility wouldn’t have to find extra sources of power generation.
Liesl Eichler Clark is the climate action engagement director at the University of Michigan.
She said all utilities have a “peak load time” -- the few days a year where the most power possible is used. Utility companies have to have enough energy generation to meet that peak plus more.
“The BWL has extra generation within that peak that they can have 24 megawatts within that amount of generation that is fine for Deep Green to use,” Clark said, “and it's not going to impact anybody else.”
Data centers produce a lot of heat, and they need to be cooled down. That’s where these facilities tend to use a lot of water. In 2023, data center cooling drank up an estimated 17 billion gallons of water, according to U.S. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Conventional data centers use evaporative cooling systems where water cools computer systems and evaporates out.
Deep Green instead uses a closed loop system, so water doesn’t evaporate and new water isn’t fed into the loop.
“At face value absolutely closed loop cooling is a big deal, and really needs to be used,” Clark said.
In general, when data centers use closed loop cooling, less water is wasted but more electricity is required to keep servers at the proper temperature.
But for Deep Green, the heat will be moved to 10 miles of pipes that heat downtown. The company is giving the heat to the BWL for free to replace some of the natural gas currently flowing through those pipes.
According to the BWL, that’s equal to taking 3,000 cars off the road every year in terms of reduced carbon emissions and will save the utility more than $1 million annually.
It also means Deep Green’s facility will “free cool” -- meaning they’re “not putting any energy in to cool it down,” according to Matt Craggs, the company’s chief technology officer.
Craggs said that’s cheaper for Deep Green by saving energy and water. The data center would only use water “on the hottest days.” He said the goal is to use no water, however.
Why Lansing?
Michigan is an attractive state for data centers. The state’s cool climate keeps server cooling costs down, and there’s room on the energy grid for the centers.
“It takes a long time to connect to the grid, and so you're going to see solutions in places where there's for interconnection, both for supply and demand,” Clark, the U-M expert, said.
“It's funny because somebody said to me ‘these big companies are preying on these small communities,’” Clark said. “But they are no sitting around with a dart going, ‘oh, let's go to this small community.’ That's not what's happening. They're looking at these other factors.”
Lee, the CEO, said Michigan was attractive on the demand side for Deep Green -- things like power, building and land prices.
“There were numerous other sites that we were considering across predominantly the North, Central and Northeastern U.S.,” Lee said. “We'll continue to progress those discussions. But Lansing was, for quite a number of reasons, the most attractive of those for us.”
Lee said Lansing is a progressive community and pointed to the Capitol being heated by geothermal energy.
He also said the BWL is a good partner for their sustainable goals. The utility has decarbonization commitments, including carbon neutrality by 2040.
Heat is hard to move effectively. That’s why Deep Green wants to be in the parking lot downtown.
“We needed to be within close proximity of the downtown heat loop,” Lee said. “So there were a very limited number of sites that we could look at that were appropriate for it.”
Lee said the high density facility will “lend itself towards AI,” “academic research,” and “high performance computer processing.”
“We expect multiple tenants in our site, and we have an aspiration that it’s local and regional industry,” he said.
Deep Green is in conversations with Michigan State University and Lansing Community College about using the facility.
Lee said he hopes the space will be used as an academic and employment resource for graduates with tech-related degrees from the Lansing area.
WKAR News explores Deep Green's footprint overseas
Deep Green was founded in 2021. Their first projects were installing tiny cloud data centers at businesses in England.
The businesses get free heat in exchange for hosting. Deep Green also refunds any electricity costs.
The company then partnered with community swimming pools to do the same. A fitness center pool in Devon slashed its heating bill by 60% after partnering with Deep Green, according to a press release from energy company Octopus Energy.
Some of Deep Green’s current customers abroad include York University, Civo and Alces Flight.
Now, the company partners with several pools, greenhouses, shrimp farms and biomass dryers.
It has one data center facility currently operating in Swindon. It's a 1 MW data center.
Four more are planned across the U.K. along with the one in Lansing. The largest facility planned across the pond will be 20 MW, making Lansing the biggest location.
Lansing residents worry about where the heat will go come summertime. In a blog post, Craggs, the technology officer, said that heat is still used in the summer and demand for hot water doesn’t stop when outside temperatures warm.
Deep Green is working on ways to store heat when there’s less demand to reuse it in the colder months.
U-M expert Clark said data centers are needed to continue technological innovations, but that sustainability is critical for the future.
“These are the site types of innovations that we need to see in order to make sure that we're when we're deploying data centers, it's happening in the most environmentally conscious way,” Clark said. “In order to hit clean energy targets, we need to see stuff like this.”
The Board of Water and Light is a financial supporter of WKAR.
