A new aluminum smelter, dirty as they are, wont double your electric bill and will employ far more people than a datacenter (other than ex-marines w/ shoot to kill orders, who works there?)
An aluminium smelter uses an immense amount of electricity, requiring about 14,000 kWh per metric ton of aluminium produced. Because it takes so much power—roughly equivalent to powering a mid-sized city like Nashville or Boston—electricity can make up to 40% of the total production cost.
I chose it as an example because they're crazy power hungry. The other classical examples of high electrical use are NH3 fertilizer plants.
But! We're not building hundreds of Al smelters all across the country. Nor are we building hundreds of NH3 plants.
We should be, seeing how a significant amount of our Al and NH3 is locked in the ME, but alas; we've decided to keep a structural, supply-side inflation that will devastate any family making less than $400k rather than divert capital from the surveillance state and chat bots.
At most, there's a market for two Al and NH3 plants in the country potentially employing thousands of lower middle class folks.
1. There's no VC distorted market building hundreds of them. At most two Al or NH3 will ever be built again in this country.
2. We need Al and NH3 in a way that we dont need data centers. Most of the protein in your body comes from synthetic NH3. Al has slashed CO2 emissions in industry.
There's a Middle Eastern fertilizer and Al crisis that's going to devastate our economies. Al and NH3 should have been on-shored 20 years ago.
3. Its already impossible to build NH3 or Al plants in NY due to other regulatory laws that target Al and NH3.
So, NY state in its (/s) infinite wisdom (/s) has realized that New Yorkers need to eat more than it needs to feed a surveillance state.