Schneider Electric Sees No Datacenter Slowdown, Urges Transparency

Schneider Electric says its datacenter business shows no slowdown, even as public opposition to new facilities grows. Steven Carlini, vice president of innovation and datacenter, said operators must become more transparent about power, water, noise, and other local impacts.

Pipeline and permitting

Carlini said Schneider's pipeline showed no slowdown, and the company has supply chain agreements with larger datacenter operators. Reports earlier this year suggested only half the capacity planned for 2026 is actually under construction in the US, and land being cleared for new projects has plateaued. Carlini nevertheless said US companies were building as fast as they could, contrasting that with planning bureaucracy and other obstacles in Europe. He said the biggest change will be the level of transparency from operators when they secure permits and request power. Traditionally, operators negotiated with local jurisdictions responsible for permits, often with non-disclosures, so residents had no visibility until construction started. Carlini expects permitting requirements to force greater disclosure, followed by reporting obligations during operations.

Community concerns

Opposition to datacenter construction has grown in the US. Campaign groups called for a moratorium on new facilities late last year, and New York state imposed a halt this summer. The scale of new builds has alarmed many people, with Meta's Hyperion facility planned to reach 5 GW of power capacity and cover an area equal to a significant chunk of Manhattan. A Pew Research Center survey found Americans increasingly wary of datacenters, with more than half saying they are bad for the environment, bad for household energy bills, and consume water resources for cooling. Carlini said operators will have to disclose where power will come from, how they will get it, water usage, carbon emissions, efficiency, physical location, noise levels, water sources, and how much water they will use. In Virginia, an ex-water sustainability program manager at AWS is taking his former employer to court over claims it published false and misleading statements about water use in the state. Carlini said operators must win hearts and minds, engage local residents more amicably, acknowledge concerns, and explain benefits such as tax breaks or lower costs. He said people using Facebook or Gmail does not mean they will welcome a datacenter next door.

AI performance metrics

For AI facilities, Carlini expects more attention to token-processing performance and efficiency rather than power capacity alone. He said the industry could focus more on tokens per watt, tokens per dollar, and even size datacenters in tokens as a performance metric for IT rather than just a power metric. He said datacenters have traditionally been sized by power consumption, which gave little idea of what they were producing or what value they were adding.

Sources: The Register