Amazon to spend $20 billion on data centers in Pennsylvania, including one next to a nuclear power plant

Amazon said Monday that it will spend $20 billion on two data center complexes in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, including one it is building alongside a nuclear power plant that has drawn federal scrutiny over an arrangement to essentially plug right into the power plant.

Kevin Miller, vice president of global data centers at Amazon's cloud computing subsidiary, Amazon Web Services, told The Associated Press that the company will build another data center complex just north of Philadelphia.

One data center is being 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 data center will get its power through the electricity grid.

While critics say data centers employ relatively few people and pack little long-term job-creation punch, their advocates say they require a huge number of construction jobs to build, spend enormous sums at area vendors and generate strong tax revenues for local governments.

Pennsylvania will provide possibly tens of millions of dollars in incentives, typically a key element of data center deals as states compete for the large installations they hope will be an economic bonanza.

Amazon also will qualify for Pennsylvania's existing sales tax exemption on purchases of data center equipment, such as servers and routers, an exemption that most states offer and that is viewed as a must-have for a state to compete.

The announcements add to the billions of dollars in Big Tech's data center cash flowing into the state.

Since the start of 2024, Amazon has committed to about $10 billion apiece to data center projects in Mississippi, Indiana, Ohio and North Carolina as it ramps up its infrastructure to compete with other tech giants to meet growing demand for artificial intelligence products.

The rapid growth of cloud computing and artificial intelligence has meanwhile fueled demand for energy-hungry data centers that need power to run servers, storage systems, networking equipment and cooling systems.

(With input form AP)