Every data centre project generates a significant amount of information, including technical reports, environmental regulations, utility records, tax incentive applications, economic impact studies, and public statements. What rarely happens, however, is a central collation of all this data. A recent dispute in Fayette County, Georgia, illustrates why this matters. Questions about water consumption, utility billing, and public communication led to several statements from various parties, each correct in its own context, yet difficult for residents, regulators, and policymakers to reconcile.
This incident was less about assigning blame and more about exposing a broader problem: data centre projects are evaluated using documents not designed for joint consideration. This presents a growing challenge, as project reviewers do not all ask the same questions or access the same information. Developers, investors, utilities, regulators, and communities often only see the part of a project that falls within their respective remit. This problem of information fragmentation affects various aspects such as jobs, electricity costs, water consumption, and transparency, all of which are closely interconnected and represent symptoms of the same underlying issue.
The Need for a Common Basis for Evaluation
The information needed for a project evaluation exists, but it is fragmented across different agencies, reports, and stages of development. The industry does not need standardised development, as different workloads require different infrastructure. A hyperscale AI training campus, an enterprise co-location facility, an edge site for latency-sensitive applications, and a disaster recovery site solve different problems and therefore require different designs. These differences are influenced by local power systems, water availability, fibre connectivity, and community priorities. Standardising projects would therefore make little sense.
What the industry does need, however, is a common language for information disclosure. Compare this to the nutritional information on packaged foods: a carton of milk, a ready meal, and a protein bar are completely different products, yet each states calories, sugar, sodium, and protein in the same format. The label does not tell consumers what to buy, but provides a common basis for comparison. This principle is also required for data centre development. I refer to this framework as a 'local balance sheet'.
The Principle of the Local Balance Sheet
Every data centre project should present a clear, project-specific statement of the values flowing into and out of the host community over time. On one side would be the benefits, including tax revenues, construction employment, permanent jobs, local procurement, and infrastructure improvements. On the other side would be the costs and commitments, such as tax incentives, public infrastructure investments, water demand, grid upgrades, potential impacts on ratepayers, and community service requirements. Timing is as important as magnitude. A project may generate significant tax revenues over 20 years but require substantial infrastructure investments in the first three years. It may create thousands of construction jobs while supporting significantly fewer permanent positions after operations begin.
None of these outcomes automatically make a project good or bad. However, without presentation in a common framework, a meaningful comparison becomes almost impossible. A local balance sheet would not dictate whether a project should be approved, nor is that its purpose. Its goal is to provide developers, investors, regulators, and communities with a common basis for evaluating projects before debates harden into competing narratives. The timing of disclosure is as crucial as its content. When many projects reach the environmental permitting stage, key decisions regarding land, energy, water, and infrastructure have already been made. A local balance sheet is most valuable as soon as a project is sufficiently defined for evaluation, and not just after each agency has reviewed only the narrow scope of its own remit.
The goal is not to make every project identical, but to ensure that every project explains itself through a common set of disclosures. How much electricity is needed? Where does the water come from? Who pays for the supporting infrastructure? What public incentives are involved? What long-term benefits are expected? Standardisation does not require uniformity, but agreement on what information is relevant. The more difficult question is how a disclosure standard is established in such a fragmented industry – with developers, hyperscalers, utilities, investors, engineers, and local governments.
The answer is that many standards initially emerge as market expectations, not as regulatory mandates. Developers who disclose more transparently make it easier for investors to assess risk, for regulators to understand impacts, and for communities to compare projects. Over time, these expectations can become common practice, as the market rewards projects that are easier to understand, finance, and approve. Transparency becomes a competitive advantage when opacity becomes a liability. Every major infrastructure industry eventually develops a common language to explain itself to investors, regulators, and capital markets. Data centres have reached this point. The question is no longer whether data centres create economic value – many clearly do. The question is whether this value, along with the costs of its creation, can be explained in a framework understandable to all. The next competitive advantage in data centre development might not be another megawatt of capacity or another plot of land, but the ability to explain a project's local balance sheet before someone else defines it for you.
