Dunleavy and the lack of data

You may have seen the headline about Gov. Mike Dunleavy hoping to get major tech companies to build energy-intensive data centers in Alaska, promising big tracts of cheap land, cheap water, cheap electricity, cool weather and subsidies.

“I am excited to extend an invitation to you and your organization to consider doing business in Alaska, as you plan where your future data farm locations will be,” Dunleavy wrote to 13 chief executives in the U.S., China and England.

The expansion of AI is expected to require massive amounts of electric power in years to come.

Dunleavy, who says he wants Alaskans to say yes to everything, offered the tech giants “a favorable business environment with potential incentives and support for technology and data infrastructure investments.”

I suspect this will turn out like many of the other things Dunleavy has half-heartedly floated since 2018—getting bankrupt gun companies to build new factories in Alaska; luring the Space Force headquarters to Alaska; cutting electric rates in Alaska to 10 cents per kilowatt hour by 2030; collecting $30 billion in 20 years from carbon sequestration on state forest lands; starting a state lottery and legalizing sports betting and keno; instituting an Inspector General office to investigate waste, fraud and abuse; creating the imaginary Alaska Office of Food Security, the imaginary Alaska Office of Energy Innovation and the imaginary Alaska Office of Family and Life.

I could go on, but that’s more than enough. And I didn’t even mention the giant dividend promises.

Dunleavy started his tenure with the “Alaska Development Team,” launched with a $441,000 no-bid contract to the grandson of campaign supporter Bob Penney.

In December 2019, Dunleavy’s 10-year budget outlook claimed that the Alaska Development Team would be an essential element in creating a stronger economy for Alaska.

“Instead of subsidizing desirable but unprofitable activities, the ADT (Alaska Development Team) is directed to work with Alaska businesses, state and federal agencies and departments, economic development organizations, industry organizations, and chambers of commerce (collectively ‘Alaska’s Stakeholders’) to identify and facilitate the removal of barriers to doing business in Alaska, to help retain and grow existing industries, to attract new opportunities to Alaska, and to deliver the message to investors and industry participants the benefits of doing business in Alaska,” Dunleavy’s budget office said.

In early 2020, the Alaska Development Team claimed to have four leaders on the state payroll, chasing development here, there and everywhere.

Today, the only Alaska Development Team “team member” is Julie Sande, the commerce commissioner, which qualifies the ADT for a prime spot on the list of imaginary offices.

At first glance, the obvious hole in the new Dunleavy data center drive is that he started it with a September 5 form letter to top executives of the tech companies that was no better than junk mail.

Here are the 13 copies of the form letter, first reported by Nat Herz.

The state employee or employees who wrote the letter for Dunleavy didn’t revise the text of each letter to mention anything specific about Microsoft, Google, Apple, Meta or the other recipients in the body of the message, simply referring to each company as “your organization.”

It didn’t matter if he was addressing Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook or Satya Narayana Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, the letter was exactly the same.

“Our state provides vast expanses of land at competitive costs, allowing for significant cost-savings when establishing and expanding your data farm operation,” Dunleavy said.

Want to taken seriously by the largest corporations in the world?

Don’t send pie-in-the-sky form letters and hope that someone above an intern will read them.

And don’t insult the intelligence of your audience by claiming that because Alaska has a small population, “competition for land, fresh water, energy and cool climate is low compared to other locales, making Alaska a competitive host for your operations.”

Competition for a cool climate is low compared to other locales?

“By choosing Alaska for your data farm, you can leverage these significant advantages while contributing to the growth and diversification of our State’s economy,” a sentence that could have been written by one of the writing robots we’ve heard so much about.

The growth and diversification of our state’s economy is of zero interest to Zuckerberg et al.

The prospect of requiring the companies to buy enough electricity for decades to pay for a $50 billion gas pipeline is also not going to outweigh the benefits of a cool climate.

The imaginary gas pipeline is “awaiting anchor tenants, such as your firm, looking for long-term contracts at a competitive price to create low-cost electricity.”

“Depending upon the model your firm employs in Alaska, your presence could actually reduce the cost of energy for residential customers, creating an incredible social license environment,” Dunleavy says.

Anchorage is facing an energy crisis and the governor should be leading the effort to find a solution by getting people of divergent opinions to reach consensus. Instead, we get idle chatter about “an incredible social license environment.”

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