Ep. 250 - Why a Finance Professor Calls Data Centers the New Railroads — Saurav Roychoudhury

Most people think the cloud floats. Saurav Roychoudhury, a Capital University economist, ran the numbers on Ohio’s data centers and found concrete, copper, and a whole lot of jobs. We get into ripple effects, why community trust is the real bottleneck, and whether any of this is zero-sum. Chapters: 00:00:00 From Calcutta to Capital University: the unlikely data center economist 00:02:31 How the Ohio Chamber’s data center study came to be 00:04:58 “It’s not ethereal”: what the cloud is actually made of 00:05:44 Inside the method: IMPLAN modeling and 30-plus interviews 00:07:53 The real bottleneck — power and water are solvable, trust is harder 00:08:42 “We want it, just not in our backyard”: the clean-water parallel 00:10:58 The mystery box: what’s really running inside a data center 00:19:11 Why the job count lags: a federal code updated only every five years 00:25:09 Ripple effects, and why above-median wages matter 00:35:06 Ohio, the third-largest data center market in the U.S. 00:40:11 Data centers vs. the dot-com boom and the railroads: a GDP comparison 00:47:48 A view from India: 1.4 billion people, less capacity than New Albany 00:50:04 Send an evangelist, not just engineers: how to earn community trust 01:08:00 New Albany’s tax innovation and the Chromebook check 01:24:05 Behind-the-meter power and a stronger grid for everyone 01:28:05 “What are we for?” Why this isn’t a zero-sum game Links: Saurav Roychoudhury — LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/sauravrc Capital University — Economics: capital.edu/academics/majors-and-minors/economics The Economic Impact Study of Data Centers in Ohio — by SRC EvalMetrics LLC (the guest’s firm) for the Ohio Chamber of Commerce Research Foundation: ohiochamberfoundation.com — data center study PwC, “Economic, Environmental, and Social Impacts of Data Centers in the United States” — commissioned by the Data Center Coalition (referenced ~00:27:32): datacentercoalition.org/reports-and-publications IMPLAN — the input-output economic modeling system used in the study (~00:05:44): implan.com Thank you for visiting our channel, be sure to Like, Comment, and Subscribe! For more information, go to https://www.QTSDataCenters.com Learn More about QTS Data Centers on the QTS YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/users/qtsdatacenters Think you have a great topic for a podcast or would like to schedule an interview with Dave? Send in your requests to [email protected]