Inside one of the world’s most efficient Data Centers

Our Take

Credit to Tom Shaw for getting a camera inside a Meta facility and walking through the AI training racks, cooling loops, and backup power systems most of us only read about in permit filings. It's genuinely useful to see the hardware behind the scroll — but remember this is a guided tour, framed by the company that owns the building. 'Most efficient' is a company talking point, not an audited public metric, and it says nothing about how that efficiency was achieved relative to the grid and watershed it sits on.

The questions the video raises — how much water does a data center consume, what happens when power fails, how much storage is really in there — are exactly the questions local officials should be demanding answers to before they approve tax abatements and utility hookups. Backup generators, chillers, and redundant power draw don't show up in a slick walkthrough, but they show up on ratepayer bills and in water utility reports. A tour like this is a good primer on the technology; it's not a substitute for the public disclosures communities are owed.

If you want to see whether a facility like this is sitting near you, check our facility map, and if your utility or county hasn't published the actual power and water terms of a deal like this, our take-action page has steps for pushing them to.