Like its Big Tech rivals, Meta ( META ) has been spending heavily recently to build data centers to power its AI ambitions. But the Mark Zuckerberg-helmed company recently ran into an unusual problem: bees.
Meta was reportedly planning to build a new nuclear-powered data center in the US, but the company's deal fell through amid environmental and regulatory issues including the discovery of rare bee species on the project's land, according to the Financial Times. , which noted that Zuckerberg reportedly told employees at a hands-on meeting last week that bees would complicate the proposed facility. Meta did not respond to requests for comment from the Observer.
It's not the first time endangered bees have played a role in Meta's data center efforts. When the company in 2016 started building a data center in County Meath, Ireland, Meta became a supporter of the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan from the country's National Biodiversity Data Centre. The program acts as a framework to encourage communities, businesses and authorities to help restore Ireland's pollinator levels, which are heavily dependent on wild bees which are facing the extinction of a third of their species.
After realizing it could “impact the system and help reverse the decline of bees in the community,” Meta began adding plants, trees and shrubs to its County Meath data center to feed the bees and start an on-site beekeeping program. overseeing ten hives and half a million bees.
“The biggest way we can influence biodiversity is by the people who own the land,” Michelle Wallace, director of operations at Host in Ireland, an initiative representing the digital infrastructure and data center community, told the Observer. The host in Ireland took the expertise of the National Biodiversity Data Center four years ago to launch an industry-wide “DCs for Bees” initiative that encourages the data center sector to become more pollinator-friendly.
In addition to its efforts in Ireland, Meta also installed beehives in all offices in Seattle and New York and established more than 30 acres of pollinator space at its data center in Gallatin, Tenn. institutions to meet its lofty AI goals, with major spending by 2024 to reach $38 billion to $40 billion.
Meta's fixed data center project would have been powered by nuclear power
Like its competitors, Meta is also reportedly considering nuclear power partners as it looks for carbon-free ways to support its super-powered AI data centers. ChatGPT queries consume nearly ten times more energy than Google ( GOOGL ) searches, according to a recent Goldman Sachs report that predicted data center power demands will grow 160 percent by the end of the decade.
To reduce rising air pollution, Amazon (AMZN) and Google last month announced deals with small modular reactor (SMR) developers, which provide designs for next-generation nuclear plants. In August, Microsoft ( MSFT ) announced plans to buy power from the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Middletown, Penn., which is expected to reopen one of its units by 2028.
The recently banned Meta data center project in the US would have been powered by a nuclear power plant operator, as reported by the Financial Times, citing people familiar with the project. According to the source, Zuckerberg told Meta employees that the deal made now would make Meta the first Big Tech company to provide nuclear-powered AI.
While the discovery of the bee species may halt Meta's timeline, the project's disruption is a good indication that the needs of biodiversity are being considered by the data center industry, Wallace said. Meta's pause in its project is “surprising,” he said. “Let there be more of that. It's about really being sensitive to the space you put it in—no matter what the building is, no matter how it's used.”
