Groundbreaking held for country’s largest data center in Millard County

MILLARD COUNTY, Utah (ABC4) — Joule Capital Partners hosted a groundbreaking ceremony on Thursday morning to mark a milestone in the development of its new energy and data center campus.

The campus, located on 4,000 acres in rural Millard County, was approved by the Millard County Commission in an August meeting.

According to Joule Capital Partners, the campus will be an investment in the nation’s energy and technology future, as an artificial intelligence data center campus. Because of the location above sea level, it will provide ‘optimal cooling efficiency’ and will start providing power in 2026.

Courtesy: Joule Capital Partners

The centers will be house high-density data banks that can be leased to major tech corporations for a number of uses including artificial intelligence. Joule Capital Partners also shared that it would bring economic growth, high-paying jobs, and sustainable innovation to the region and state.

“These data centers could be a huge blessing to everyone in Millard County,” Millard County Commission Chair Trevor Johnson said during a public meeting on the rezone in August.

Notably, though, the data center has been controversial for some of the residents of Millard County. At the August commission meeting, one resident said he moved to Millard County to avoid industrial zones.

 “There’s a reason we chose to live there,” He said, “We’d like to try and preserve that as much as we can.”

A representative with the Millard County Sheriff’s Office also raised concern that the center will increase traffic on rural roads near the center where there are normally kids and animals.

“I have a plan that every citizen will benefit from them being here, not only the ones that work here, not everybody else, but I will make sure that revenues are divided between those people that live in this county and those people that are citizens here that we really appreciate,” Bill Wright, Millard County Commissioner said on Thursday.

Joel Ferry, Executive Director with the Department of Natural Resources said that the project falls within Governor Spencer Cox’s ‘Operation Gigawatt’, an initiative that aims to double Utah’s power production over the next 10 years.  “Joule is going to be really at the center of that as we break ground today to build these data centers in a very bright future for Utah,” Ferry added.