Artificial intelligence is reshaping the world’s scientific, industrial and energy landscapes – and the Tri-Cities is right at the center of this transformation. While much of Washington state is still debating the role of data centers needed to support this sea change, the Tri-Cities has taken a different path. 

Communities across our area are already showing how – with the right partnerships and strategic intention – technological collaboration and data center deployment can be enablers of our state’s clean energy goals, scientific innovation and leadership, job growth, and industrial and economic development.

In a region that has powered the Pacific Northwest for 80 years, we understand that the question is not whether data centers are good or bad. The real question is whether we will utilize them as tools to build a prosperous future – or push away these opportunities that other states will happily capture.

Strategic partnerships

Across the Tri-Cities, local communities are demonstrating what a thoughtful, intentional approach to data centers can look like. 

Deploying advanced nuclear clean energy has been a top priority for the Tri-Cities for years, but moving from aspiration to deployment requires partners with scale, capital and long-term load. That is exactly what Energy Northwest found through its collaboration with Amazon and X-energy on the Cascade Advanced Energy Facility. 

Amazon’s prospective data center provides the anchor demand that makes it possible to deploy the Xe-100 here, advancing public power, modernizing the grid and reinforcing our community’s leadership in clean energy. This is not data center growth for its own sake; the data center partnership is what enables public-sector energy priorities to align with private-sector investment.

The Atlas Agro Pacific Green Fertilizer facility in Richland is another illustration of how data centers can be leveraged to unlock major industrial and clean energy opportunities. For Atlas, the biggest challenge has not been building a first-of-its-kind, carbon-free fertilizer manufacturing facility; rather, it has been building the transmission line to power the facility that has served as the long pole in the tent. 

By pursuing a co-location partnership with a technology company that can provide upfront capital to build the line, Atlas Agro and the city of Richland can advance job growth, a strengthened agriculture sector, onshored domestic fertilizer production, and climate leadership via both the fertilizer plant and a data center campus.

Meanwhile, the city of West Richland is considering opportunities to integrate data centers into new municipal and district energy systems as the Lewis & Clark Ranch development moves forward. 

And the Port of Pasco is pursuing how its work on agricultural symbiosis – a circular model where industrial byproducts become inputs for other industries – could be strengthened through data center partnerships that provide infrastructure, heat and energy services needed to scale the model. 

Collectively, these examples reinforce how our region is proactively aligning technology infrastructure with local, community-centered goals.

Federal partnerships at Hanford

Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) issued a national Request for Information on potential AI infrastructure sites. The Energy Forward Alliance led our community’s response, articulating a unified regional vision of integrating data centers with new transmission, clean energy generation, advanced manufacturing, and research assets across industrially-zoned portions of underutilized Hanford Site lands. 

DOE is now actively engaging with our region to explore how Hanford can support national security, scientific and AI missions paired with local economic development. This is the Tri-Cities at our best: leading, not waiting; partnering, not prohibiting.

Tri-Cities leads nation

PNNL’s growing role in artificial intelligence further underscores the importance of data center infrastructure in our region. The Genesis Mission, launched by DOE, is a national effort to harness AI to accelerate scientific discovery and energy innovation. From grid optimization and climate modeling to advanced materials and national security, these breakthroughs require immense computing power and reliable, scalable infrastructure.

Data centers are not incidental to these missions, they are foundational. If Washington wants to continue serving as home to PNNL’s world-class scientific leadership and attract the next generation of federal investment, we must be a state that welcomes – not discourages – the infrastructure that enables it.

State’s tech legacy

The recent recommendations issued by Gov. Ferguson’s Data Center Workgroup have raised concerns for communities across Washington. While the report acknowledges benefits of data centers, several provisions – if implemented – would significantly disincentivize future investment. In effect, they send a message to hyperscalers and technology companies that Washington is skeptical at best – and hostile at worst – to their presence.

For a state with such a strong legacy of technological innovation – the state of Amazon and Expedia, Microsoft and F5, Zillow and T-Mobile – this does not reflect a forward-looking future built on prosperity and innovation. Nor does it reflect the real work being done in places like the Tri-Cities, where local governments, energy producers, researchers and industry partners are already showing how data centers can strengthen clean energy deployment, job creation and industrial development.

Labor is right

Washington’s workers see this clearly. Organizations like Climate Jobs Washington and the Washington State Building and Construction Trades Council have been unequivocal in sounding the alarm about the state’s direction and the recommendations from the Work Group: “…by blocking these projects, opponents are choking out one of the only consistent sources of family-wage union construction jobs.”

Sweeping anti-data center policies threaten jobs, delay clean energy deployment, undermine investment in our state’s communities, and cede economic opportunity to other states. These labor organizations know that major clean energy and technology projects don’t get built by accident – they get built through partnership. And unless we welcome the partners who can help build them, other states will.

Better path forward

No one is calling for data centers to blanket our state. Local communities are seeking to work with partners strategically and intentionally to align data center investments with our goals for energy generation deployment, industrial and manufacturing job growth, and other economic development. 

In the Tri-Cities, that work is already underway. We are demonstrating how to plan with intention, partner with purpose, and use data centers as an asset – not an obstacle – to building the prosperous future we want. If Washington wants to lead in clean energy, in AI, and in innovation, then we must embrace the partnerships that make that leadership possible.

Sean V. O’Brien is the executive director of the Energy Forward Alliance, a clean energy nonprofit subsidiary of the Tri-City Development Council (TRIDEC).