Fremont County data center part of larger $66B plan

While little official information about the data center taking shape northeast of Riverton has been aired, a big price tag was revealed on Tuesday: The data center under construction near the unincorporated community of Lost Cabin is phase one of a much larger, $66 billion data center project.

Data centers are currently a hot topic in both Wyoming and across the country, as concerns about their water and power consumption compete with promises of economic growth and technological advancement. 

As those concerns have come to Fremont County, it’s become clear that the county’s lack of zoning regulations means that the county has little control over whether such projects will move forward. And the scale of the planned Lost Cabin site is far beyond the relatively small facility that originally prompted conversations within the county.

“The building that’s out there is a prototype building. I guessed $66 million,” Fremont County Commissioner Ron Fabrizius said.

“The building they’re building now is $16 million. That’s just the building getting ready. The electronics on top of that is another $22 million,” 

Fremont County Board of Commissioners Chair Larry Allen responded. “The one they are planning now, they will have $66 billion invested.”

Facility already built

Even as the county considers whether it should take steps to create regulations that could address data center development, the project has seemingly gone from plan to reality.

“Yesterday I took a tour of the current small data center that they’ve built,” County Planning Director Steve Baumann told county commissioners Tuesday morning. He noted that the building has already received approval from the state fire marshal’s office and from the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality’s Air Quality Division for its backup generators; it expects to have power from High Plains Power commissioned by late October or early November.

Baumann described the current facility as a metal building divided into four parts, with a section of about 24 feet by 60 feet dedicated to servers.

“I asked specifically what their intentions were for this request. They hope to build several buildings,” Baumann explained. “Perhaps new construction will be phased in specific campuses and for power to be generated by natural gas reciprocating generators similar to a very large CAT generator — 500 megawatt generating capacity. It’d be a substantial amount of power, none of which would go onto the grid, for the purpose of running a new data center or group of data centers.” 

The project is likely large enough that it would require the approval of the Industrial Siting Council. Its proposal to generate its own power comes amidst serious conversations about whether Wyoming should relax some of its rules around third-party power generation that have often been occurring specifically in the context of data centers and their potential impacts for local residents.

Maps associated with the company’s air quality permit application show the data center as located on a lot associated with the address 67 Lost Cabin Road, neighboring the JB Okie Mansion and its caretakers Zane and Ginger Fross. However, Baumann told the commissioners Tuesday that the closest residents to the data center are about a mile away.

In a prior interview, Zane Fross told The Ranger that he is optimistic about the economic opportunity such a project may bring to the area.

Who’s behind the project?

Initially, the company or companies behind the project appeared somewhat mysterious. 

Eventually the name ETC DC OpCo emerged, a company organized in the state of Delaware which was registered just this year. 

However, while the project saw little in the way of permitting requirements from the county, its backup generators required it to apply for an air quality permit from the Wyoming DEQ — and more information could be found on those forms.

According to information within the air quality permit application, the contacts for the Lost Cabin data center project are Aethel Energy Senior Environmental Specialist John Wester and ETC DC OpCo Production Superintendent Dustin Miller. The company behind the data center project is registered as ETC DC OpCo, while Baumann confirmed Tuesday that the company he’s been in touch with about the project is Aethel.

Miller’s LinkedIn profile says that he works for Electio Technologies, a Houston-based “energy transformation company building the optimization layer for the AI era” that appears to have the same address as ETC DC OpCo. ETC is sometimes used as an abbreviation for energy transfer company.

The county map server, which warns it may not always be fully up to date, lists the owner of the parcel of land on which the proposed data center would be constructed as Contango Resources LLC. Aethel Energy acquired Contango’s Wyoming assets last year.

Aethel Energy and Electio Technologies are both backed by a venture capital operation called General Catalyst.

Commissioners contemplate regulations

“I’m done in two months, but any government would say ‘let’s do something about this’ because it’s going to get out of control. It will have problems in a sense concerning land, water, those migrating animals … it’s going to have an effect on cattle, and people,” Commissioner Clarence Thomas remarked, noting that despite the concerns the commissioners have heard from the community, the county currently has little ability to take action. 

“We’re not just talking one data center.  We’re talking about many others coming after that,” Thomas said. “It’s like weeds.”

“This newer facility, the one they’re building right now, they’re contemplating having recirculating water … they aren’t intending to use groundwater except for a cycle of three to five years,” Baumann told the commissioners. “There are a lot around Cheyenne that seem to be operating well and generating a lot of money for the city. They do generate a lot of money in componentry.”

Commissioner Jennifer Wilson noted that there are different types of data centers, which have different levels of potential impacts. “This one is confined with its closed loop system; it’s more chemicals in the lines than water. They already have an ability out there to clean the water themselves and reuse it … Some do use enormous amounts of water,” she remarked. Other issues to consider include noise and the risk of fire, she added. “We also need to take into consideration the different types … how do we want to initiate our say in how they can or cannot set up within the county?”

Commissioner Mike Jones said that in his view, any attempt to get the public to weigh in on the issue will be “a messy process. How do we go about defining the range of public opinions we’re going to get?” he asked. “This county has continuously stated that it doesn’t want zoning. Filling a room with a large amount of people isn’t scientific and it does not define how the mass of agricultural interests … Anything that attempts to change the status quo in the past I think you’ve got to be careful in terms of the method.” 

Even given those challenges, Thomas felt that it was something the county needs to address. “We’ve got to get a foothold on this,” he said, in terms of environmental impact, regulation and “if it does happen how we as a county gain monetary funding out of this.”