Ep 143: Demystifying Data Centers with Dan Crosby: Energy, AI, and the Future Workforce

Our Take

Credit to the Data Center Revolution podcast for getting Dan Crosby of Legend Energy Advisors on record, but notice who's doing the talking: an energy advisor whose business is helping data centers get built faster, framing public pushback on power, water, and land as just history rhyming with the railroads and rural electrification. That's a comfortable story if you're pricing megawatts for hyperscalers. It's a lot less comfortable if you're a ratepayer watching your utility ask regulators for a new gas plant to serve a campus you'll never set foot in.

The episode's own chapter list is telling — grid impact and 'project accountability' show up at minute 25, almost as an afterthought after the innovation talk. That ordering matches what we see in filings across the country: the interconnection studies, water permits, and tax abatement votes that actually determine what a community pays get far less airtime than the AI-boom narrative. Comparing this buildout to the automobile age skips the part where today's deals are negotiated county by county, often with NDAs, PILOT agreements, and utility tariffs that shove risk onto the public side of the meter.

Worth a listen if you want the industry's own pitch on why this time is normal. Then check our facility map to see whether that pitch matches what's actually been approved near you, and if it hasn't, find out how to weigh in before the next deal is finalized.