Matt Stansberry works for a global technology consulting firmMatt Stansberry
BRECKSVILLE, Ohio — Late last year, online retail and computing services giant Amazon announced it was investing $1.1 billion in central Ohio over three years. According to The Columbus Dispatch, the average pay for one of the 120 jobs in its technology sites will be $80,000.
For the last 14 years, I have worked as a researcher and consultant for the data center industry. A data center is a highly specialized building designed to house and support the large computing systems that undergird the Internet and global economy.
I have spent my career exploring how businesses keep pace with the rapidly evolving customer demands and technology requirements – advising on data center capital projects, corporate governance and risk issues.
The world’s tech companies, financial organizations, health care, insurance, retailers, and government organizations all manage portfolios of owned data centers, leased facilities and cloud computing services around the globe in order to meet business needs.
Ohio has become an attractive place to build data centers, as evidenced by Amazon’s recently completed expansion in Columbus.
Typically, when one of the major players in the tech field moves into a location, ancillary services and competitors quickly follow to take advantage of the momentum – bringing in even more jobs and investment.
But data centers are energy-intensive. For companies like Amazon, Facebook or Microsoft, technology infrastructure is their largest corporate sustainability liability.
Increasingly, corporate sustainability drives decisions at large companies, as this function can affect a company’s standing with investors and stock performance.
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According to Uptime Institute’s Annual Data Center Industry Survey from 2016, 70 percent of information technology executives participate in their organizations’ corporate sustainability programs, versus less than 10 percent just a few years ago.
Starting in 2009, organizations like Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council pilloried Facebook and other web companies for sourcing carbon-intensive utility providers.
Many companies have shifted utility sourcing in the interim years, and worked to demonstrate environmental stewardship. But these companies continue to be closely monitored. More traditional enterprise organizations are also under scrutiny – especially companies with large technology footprints.
Congress is currently considering a number of bills and Cabinet appointments, the net effect of which will be to roll back environmental regulation, from scrapping the Waters of the U.S. rule, to repealing or weakening the Endangered Species Act, or even allowing drilling in the national parks.
The companies which represent a potential future of our economy — from cloud computing providers servicing health care and advanced manufacturing, to wholesale data center companies wooing software vendors — will not prioritize slightly cheaper utilities at the expense of their image and corporate sustainability mandates.
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These companies cannot afford to be tied to unsustainable environmental practices because it’s just too important to their shareholders and stock price.
Also, will drilling in our state’s only national forest, or encouraging mountaintop removal mining, help us to attract and retain a workforce to do the jobs at these kinds of companies?
According to the U.S. Census Bureau Ohio has lost a net of 44,483 people to out of state migration in the last five years, even accounting for instate migration.
I grew up in Akron and couldn’t wait to get out of Ohio. I spent my 20s and 30s living in places with great forests, clean rivers and beaches – all places with plenty of job opportunity.
Now I’ve moved home to raise my kids near my family, and the Cleveland Metroparks and Cuyahoga Valley National Park are my lifelines. Having places in Southeast Ohio with Appalachian streams and wildlife vastly improves my quality of life.
Overturning environmental regulations won’t bring back jobs that no longer exist. It will only make this place less livable for young people, and less appealing to future employers.
According to Politifact, California’s state gross domestic product has increased from about $1.8 trillion in 2006 to more than $2.3 trillion last year, under the strictest environmental laws in the country.
According to FactCheck.org, under the “onerous” environmental regulations of the last eight years, the U.S. economy has added nearly 10.7 million jobs. Median household income has increased 2 percent. Corporate profits and stock prices have both soared to record highs.
By catering to a knee-jerk anti-regulatory sentiment in Washington, Ohio’s members of Congress will mortgage our environment and our health for very little return, and all but guarantee our economy will not be competitive for the future.
Matt Stansberry works for a global technology consulting firm and writes natural history essays for Belt Magazine in Cleveland.
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