Data centers are not new to Wyoming. They have been part of our landscape since the early 2000s, most notably with the Wyoming Supercomputing Center and Microsoft's first major campus in 2012, both located in Cheyenne.
But data centers are becoming a hot topic in Wyoming.
The governor issued an executive order directing state agencies to promote the responsible development of data centers, a legislator has suggested a special session of the legislature to consider data centers, and candidates for office are talking about them.
The Cheyenne City Council dealt with the topic again last week, as Cowboy State Daily reported that, “another data-center dominated night for the Cheyenne City Council on Monday, with intense, sometimes emotional public testimony on what would be the largest annexation in Cheyenne history… to support expansion of data centers.”
Why all this attention now? The answer lies in the speed and scale of growth. Major operators such as Microsoft and Meta have expanded significantly along with new entrants such as Crusoe and Related Digital.
Wyoming now hosts between 20 and 30 operational data centers, with most concentrated in and around Cheyenne. Other locations are being discussed for proposed sites, most notably is the massive campus being proposed by Prometheus Hyperscale near Evanston. This company has also identified a major expansion site in central Wyoming.
As time goes on and the demand for more data centers increases, other places in Wyoming are certain to enter the discussion. Wyoming already has the most data centers per capita in the United States.
Why in Wyoming?
The state offers several advantages attractive to technology companies: a cool, dry climate that reduces cooling costs, relatively low risk of natural disasters, favorable tax policies, abundant energy resources, and a reputation for being business friendly, all of which have positioned Wyoming as a desirable location for large-scale digital infrastructure.
The economic benefits are real.
Data centers bring substantial capital investment, generate tax revenues, support construction employment, and help diversify Wyoming's economy.
In a state long dependent upon mineral development, attracting investment from the technology sector has obvious appeal.
Proponents of data center expansion express all of these benefits with little or no apparent concern about the impacts it will cause.
Yet with that growth comes consequences, either intended or otherwise.
Large data centers and their supporting infrastructure should be subject to Wyoming's Industrial Development Information and Siting Act.
When the Siting Act was enacted in 1975, lawmakers were concerned about large projects such as mines, power plants, pipelines, and energy facilities that could affect local communities significantly.
The Act was designed to ensure that growth occurred in an orderly manner and that communities had adequate time and resources to address the impacts of major development.
In spite of the fact that most data centers are or will be located in zoned industrial or business parks, they are able to bypass the review process required under the Act because of the “industrial park” exemption in the current law.
This, even though modern data center campuses can require hundreds of megawatts of electricity, extensive transmission infrastructure, large land areas, significant water resources, and resemble the type of projects the Act was intended to address.
The Siting Act should provide oversight since coal mines, natural gas facilities, nuclear facilities, wind farms, solar and transmission projects must undergo a comprehensive review process because of their impacts.
Large data center developments should also be evaluated under comparable standards.
The impact that data centers can have on local communities must be taken into account, which is one of the purposes of the Siting Act to prevent communities from being overwhelmed by rapid growth.
Large projects can create demand for housing, strain infrastructure, put pressure on emergency services, and add burdens on local governments.
A further reason for oversight under the Act is the impact that multiple data centers have on the demand for electricity, water, land, housing, transportation, and public services becoming substantial, if not overwhelming.
The Siting Act was specifically designed to examine these broader impacts rather than viewing each project in isolation.
Finally, the Siting Act provides a statewide review process. Currently, much of the review for data centers occurs through local zoning and permitting processes.
A state-level review can provide uniform standards, create greater predictability for developers, and ensure that impacts are evaluated consistently across Wyoming.
None of this suggests Wyoming should discourage data center development. To the contrary, the state should continue to welcome responsible investment and economic diversification. But growth and oversight are not mutually exclusive.
Data centers that rival the scale and impact of large industrial developments should be subject to the same careful review that Wyoming has long required of other facilities under the Siting Act.
The Wyoming Legislature needs to remove the current exemption in the Siting Act for projects located in zoned “industrial parks,” where most data centers or AI centers sit.
With this change in the law, applicants for data centers will have to provide all the same information required of other industrial projects and, at the same time, give affected communities and citizens an opportunity to provide their concerns and needs before the Siting Council gives its approval for the project to proceed with construction.
Data centers are definitely a hot topic. And the Wyoming Legislature must bring data centers under the Siting Act for the sake of Wyoming’s people, their communities and its resources.
Editor's note: Rex Arney, as a former state House Representative, was the sponsor of the bill that led to the passage of Wyoming's Industrial Development Information and Siting Act of 1975.
Arney served in the Wyoming House from 1973 through 1976 and in the Wyoming Senate from 1977 until mid-1988 when he resigned to become general counsel for National Endowment for the Humanities.
