Jeffrey Steele, executive director of the New Mexico Building and Construction Trades Council (NMBCTC), joined the America's Work Force Union Podcast for Trades Day to discuss the council’s partnership with Green Data, a developer planning data centers designed to produce their own power and water.
Steele described how the partnership began, how the facilities would operate, the state's upcoming moratorium and guardrail debate, and the union jobs and training he hopes the project will bring.
Jeffrey Steele, executive director of the New Mexico Building Construction Trades Council, said his path into the trades began at a high school career fair. An avid outdoorsman, Steele figured the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Forest Service would hand him a uniform, but he was told to come back in four to eight years, after college. He did not even like high school, so Steele said he went home to his father, the business manager for Ironworkers Local 24 in Denver. While he wanted to become an ironworker, his father suggested he start at the Laborers Union to gain construction experience.
Back then, Steele recalled, high school counselors pushed everyone toward college, so the fact he knew of the trades was a huge benefit. As a third-generation ironworker, Steele worked up through journeyman, foreman, general foreman and superintendent to apprenticeship coordinator and business manager. He is proud to have been a union member since 1980. His son is starting his 19th year in the trade, Steele said with pride.
Green Data approached the NMBCTC, Steele said, after seeing an interview by Joan Baker of UA Local 412, who runs the building trades’ nonprofit apprenticeship readiness program and Trades Station Closet. Baker arranged the meeting between Green Data and the council, and the conversation grew from there, he said.
Green Data is coming to New Mexico because of the climate, Steele said, and its plan to capture atmospheric water addresses one of the major arguments against data centers: that they use up water in a high-desert state. The company wants to avoid drilling wells or tapping the aquifer, he said, and they also plan to run on 100 percent off-grid solar and wind power. It’s a perfect fit, Steele said.
Steele said the company’s units capture atmospheric moisture, which does not require rain, and can generate between 150 gallons and 15,000 gallons a day, depending on size. As the company explained it to him, the plant would need to capture water only 9 months a year because the units do not work well in winter, leaving extra water to return to the ground or community wells. He acknowledged there is debate about whether pulling moisture from the air could prevent local rain. He also admitted he does not fully understand the science, but thinks the premise sounds pretty cool.
For the alternative energy needed to power the data center, Steele said solar farms are popping up across New Mexico, wind farms are growing, and the state is also evaluating geothermal possibilities.
Steele said Green Data hoped to begin permitting and get shovels in the ground before December, but that is unlikely given public opposition to data centers. The state’s new governor, who Steele said believes in the trades and good jobs and knows data centers probably are not going away, has vowed to impose a moratorium by executive order once in office. That will allow legislators to craft a reasonable, reliable and responsible guardrail bill, Steele said. The NMBCTC is working with legislators who will sponsor a guardrails bill, he said, and Green Data’s approach already fits what he expects to be included in the legislation.
For now, Steele said, Green Data is working through the political system with support from the trades, but meaningful conversations are hard until newly elected legislators are sworn in on Jan. 1.
Steele referenced Project Jupiter in southwestern New Mexico, owned by Oracle. The data center is being built under the state’s prevailing wage act, so jobs pay well, but the project is under fire for its water use. It is not supposed to tie into the electrical grid, he said, but it recently requested to connect to El Paso Electric for life-safety measures. The request did not go over well, Steele said. In his view, Oracle is acting the opposite of what Green Data has proposed.
Steele said Green Data understands the project must be covered by a Project Labor Agreement. In an early conversation, it was suggested to Green Data that the people who will work at the facility be in a union covered by a collective bargaining agreement. Steele believes the trades build the data center and supply a unionized maintenance and operations workforce, similar to the more than 1,600 craft workers at Los Alamos National Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy site. The NMBCTC wants Green Data to be the first data center with that workforce under a collective bargaining agreement, Steele said.
When Green Data asked how those workers would be trained, Steele said the council proposed a community workforce development center where all the trades hold classes. Green Data agreed, he said, calling it “perfect.”
Steele offered to return in 2027 to provide an update on the situation in New Mexico, as he expects action by the state legislator.
More information on the New Mexico Building Construction Trades Council is available at nmbuildingtrades.org.
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