The problems are measured. Our answers are intentions — held to the same standard.
Every figure sourced and dated · Last checked October 2026Every number on the left comes from a government agency, a national laboratory, a grid monitor, a peer-reviewed study, a national pollster, an independent tracker, or the company that reported it. Each one links to its source at the bottom of the page.
Everything on the right is design intent, not a result. Node Zero isn’t built yet, and nothing here claims an outcome the data hasn’t shown.
Each step names what we’ll measure and publish. Measure first, claim second. If the evidence doesn’t support a step, we don’t take it.
of all U.S. electricity went to data centers in 2023 — 176 terawatt-hours. By 2028 that is projected to reach 6.7% to 12%.1
of the $16.4 billion in capacity charges from PJM’s 2028/2029 capacity auction, held in July 2026 — 38.2% — came from data center load, according to PJM’s independent market monitor. PJM is the grid operator for much of the eastern U.S.2
a month: how much a typical Dominion Energy household in Virginia could see its generation and transmission costs rise by 2040 because of data center demand, in 2024 dollars.3
Node Zero’s computing is modular and staged. Each module is meant to be added only after the last one has produced reviewable performance data — not built out to a forecast and paid for by the neighbors. The energy strategy stays subject to utility review and agreement.
How we’ll know: energy use and performance reported publicly, module by module, before any expansion.
liters of water consumed on site by U.S. data centers in 2023, up from 21.2 billion in 2014 — plus nearly 800 billion more used to generate their electricity.1
gallons consumed in 2024 by Google’s data center site in Berkeley County, South Carolina — about 2.1 million gallons a day.4
Sealed compute is designed to sit in an already-flooded quarry pit so that keeping it cool doesn’t draw on the water a town drinks. That is the benefit we are designing for: drinking water left alone. We don’t claim energy savings over the best-run land data centers; the published record doesn’t show them. Do no harm comes first: the pit is studied before any hardware enters it.
How we’ll know: water used per unit of computing reported — including what evaporates from the pit — and temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH, turbidity, and conductivity measured before expansion and published. If the evidence doesn’t support the next phase, there is no next phase.
of U.S. adults oppose an AI data center being built in their area — 48% strongly. Fewer, 53%, oppose a nuclear power plant in their area.5
in data center projects — at least 75 of them — blocked or delayed by local opposition in the first quarter of 2026 alone, by one tracker’s count.6
The Stewardship Engine starts by opening the doors and convening the community’s own institutions — schools, co-ops, civic and tribal leaders, workers, and families — as participants, not an audience. A site moves forward only with the support of the community around it. Without that, the mission dies, and it should.
How we’ll know: a site moves forward only with visible community support, decided in the open — and the campus stays open for anyone to walk through and read the data.
full-time workers at a typical 250,000-square-foot data center once it’s running — about half of them contractors — after roughly 1,500 at the peak of construction.3
in tax savings the industry received from Virginia’s data center sales and use tax exemption in a single year, fiscal 2023.3
The campus is designed to need people: skilled jobs building, running, researching, and caring for the site, paid a wage a person can build a life on. And it’s designed to be shared — rental eco cabins, community gardens and farmers markets, trails, demonstrations, and supervised water-based recreation, open to the public. Schools and universities get a living campus as a classroom.
How we’ll know: who works on the site, what they’re paid, and what stays in the region, reported alongside the water data.
Virtually all the electricity a data center uses leaves it as heat. Where it is finally being measured, almost none of that heat is put to use.
of the heat generated by the EU data centres that reported in the first round of mandatory reporting (filed 2024, covering 2023) was reused — and the European Commission cautions the data is incomplete. Only 67 reporting data centres reported any heat reuse.7
We could find no national figure for the United States at all.
The campus is planned as one living system, so the heat its computers produce is part of the design from the beginning: accounted for and kept within do-no-harm limits for the water. We make no claim that the heat will be reused; in South Carolina’s warm climate, most of it arrives when nobody needs it.
How we’ll know: a year-round baseline and a heat budget for the pit before any load, then water temperature, oxygen, and stratification watched continuously against that baseline, with limits set before operation starts.
known abandoned hardrock mine features on federal land alone — pits, tunnels, and more — pose or may pose environmental hazards, out of at least 140,000 known features.8
permitted mine sites in South Carolina today — sand, clay, granite, limestone, kaolin, and more.9
of people are injured or killed every year across the country exploring or playing on mine property.10
Stewardship Compute is purpose-built for flooded quarries and abandoned mine pits — already-disturbed water, with no new excavation. Around the pit, the campus is designed to give the public a cared-for way to enjoy the land and the water: trails and docks, with swimming and water recreation only where trained lifeguards are on duty and the water is tested. Unsupervised quarry swimming is dangerous, and we won’t pretend otherwise.
How we’ll know: every Node sited only on already-disturbed land, with its water and land condition measured before work begins and reported after — plus recreational water quality, lifeguard hours, and every incident logged and published.
of U.S. river and stream miles were in poor biological condition, judged by their bottom-dwelling insect life, in EPA’s 2018–19 national survey.11
of U.S. lakes were in poor condition for phosphorus in 2022 — a nutrient that can feed algae blooms.12
Do no harm first — then, maybe, do good. Whether a stewarded site can go beyond doing no harm and actually leave its water healthier is the open question our field research exists to answer. We won’t claim it before the data does.
How we’ll know: a baseline study before hardware enters the water, continuous monitoring after, and data anyone can read.
Some of the most-repeated figures about data centers can’t be traced to a primary source when you go looking for where they came from. We left them out.
Figures checked against their sources in October 2026. If you find an error, tell us through the contact page and we’ll correct it in the open.
The problems are already measured.