In Brazil, giant data centre plan sets off worry in town once abundant with water
The project in Paracatu will be larger than the combined total of all data centres currently installed in the country.
Black News 
As the president of Paracatu’s city council, Manoel Alves is used to being courted by companies and executives that want his blessing for new business. But on a Thursday afternoon in May 2026, he was upset talking on the phone about a data centre planned for his city, about which he was informed by reporters.
“I just heard the data centre construction will start in two months. Don’t you guys know about this either?” Alves asked someone at the mayor’s office. The answer from the other side of the call was “no”, the same received from all interviewees: Local authorities, business owners, farmers, and citizens.
“It is some new hotel concept?” a major restaurant owner in the city asked. “A dentist?” a citizen in Paracatu’s main square questioned. “Data centre? What is this?” queried the guardian of an 18th-century church.
The data centre in Paracatu, a municipality located a three-hour drive from Brazil’s capital, Brasília, is not just any data centre, but a 1-gigawatt data centre, which will be larger than the combined total of all data centres currently installed in the country, which use around 800 megawatts.
Or similar to one of the gigantic projects that are part of the Stargate initiative, one of the world’s largest artificial...
