Supreme Court Hears Arguments on Geofence Warrants for Cellphone Location Data Under Fourth Amendment

North Carolina enacted sales and use tax breaks for data centers in 2010 and expanded them in 2015.

25% on equipment like computers and electrical infrastructure, plus taxes on electricity use. To qualify, operators must meet county wage standards, provide health insurance to full-time employees, and invest $75 million in private funds within five years. These exemptions divert up to $57 million annually from state and local revenues, state figures indicate.

9 billion in gross profits last year while proposing an 18% rate hike for North Carolina customers, which would add $34 monthly to bills for 1,000 kilowatt-hours of usage. Electric bills statewide have risen 22% since 2020. Duke spokesman Jeff Brooks said the data centers support operations and enable reliable service, with tax savings passed to customers when possible.

Gov. Josh Stein told his Energy Policy Task Force earlier this month that the legislature should reconsider the exemptions. Seven Democratic state lawmakers introduced legislation on Monday to repeal sales tax exemptions for data centers.

Rani Masri, co-director of the NC Environmental Justice Network, said, “It is infuriating, but not surprising, that Duke Energy both benefits from getting sales and usage tax incentives. We’re giving Duke Energy money to build something and then we’re paying Duke Energy higher utility rates. It is absolutely absurd.

The North Carolina Utilities Commission held a public hearing in Roxboro earlier this month on the rate hikes. Microsoft plans a data center on 1,350 acres in north Roxboro near Duke's Hyco Lake coal plants, where the utility is building two natural gas plants to replace coal facilities, potentially burning both fuels during transition.

More than a dozen local governments in the state have imposed temporary moratoria on data center construction.

Duke is expected to file a rebuttal by May 12. Public Staff engineering manager Blaise Michna testified that Duke's natural gas plans are overly aggressive and its forecasting favors the fuel. Hope Taylor, executive director of Clean Water for North Carolina, told the commission Duke exaggerated load forecasts, including for data centers, to justify the buildout.

Com. 3% of national total power use and potentially doubling overall demand. China is testing a prototype truck-mounted nuclear reactor, the world's first 10-megawatt vehicle-mounted unit, developed over several years, a leading scientist told the South China Morning Post.

The output could power a medium-sized AI data center. The team seeks deployment opportunities. Elsewhere in science news, astronomers identified 10,000 new exoplanets hidden in data from NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, launched in 2018 to search for worlds beyond our solar system, New Scientist reported.

U.S. government holds 328,372 Bitcoin, about 207,000 more than the next five countries combined, according to Bitwise data cited by CoinDesk.

Biobank and a participant in the project, said he was angry and upset about an event involving misuse by a few individuals, per BBC News.