Facts and Information About the RB Inyokern Data Center

Facts - see resources (1)-(5): 

1. Planned for downtown Inyokern, California with 912 residents and 22% living below poverty level (12.5% California average).
2. This is a 50 acre, 238,000 sqft facility with 40 back up diesel generators rated at 3MW per generator (120MW total back up diesel) to support computer servers, hardware, networking equipment, and other computing technologies.
3. There is an extremely large water usage extracted from the local water basins for cooling IT systems of the data centers. On average, water usage is 0.2 gal/kwh for the most water efficient dry cooling (air conditioned) to 2.4 gal/kwh for wet cooling (evaporative). For the proposed RB Inyokern 198 MW data center by 2030 with a hybrid cooling system, this could equate to an estimated 7,980 acre-feet per year (2,601,720,000 gal per year) or about 40% of the IWV’s annual 20,000 acft/year water consumption. This is a conservative estimate for a hybrid system without extremely hot years.
4. The water situation is so tough in this community that the Inyokern Community Services District (water district) was designated as deficient in ability to provide safe and affordable drinking water to residents by California State Water Resources Control Board (2025) and the rest of Indian Wells Valley has been designated as a critically overdrafted water basin by CA Department of Water, with many wells dropping by 1-5 ft/year.
5. The Data Heat Island effect has been shown that globally data centers raise ground surface temperatures in the surrounding area by an average of 2° C or about 4° F, inducing a local microclimate temperature increase.
6. As energy demands surge, many of the additional infrastructure and energy generation costs are passed along to the local community by the utility companies. In Louisiana, Michigan and Illinois, customers near data centers saw their electrical bills rise by 20-40%.
7. Data center jobs created tend to be short-term, few, low-tech and beneficial only to the corporations involved, not the local community.
8. Wastewater pollution, noise pollution, light and air pollution from constant running of air handling units and monthly maintenance checks on 40 diesel generators (upwards of 100 db) can be heard and impact residents up to three miles away.
9. This project is backed by the Real Estate Services powerhouse of Cushman & Wakefield, valued at $3 billion dollars.
10. The developer R&L Capital is asking for a Small Power Plant Exemption (SPPE) from California Energy Commission to bypass the state environmental permitting process (CEQA/EIR), valid for small power plants from 50-100 MW in capacity.
11. R&L Capital tends to piecemeal projects, such as the Inyokern Solar and Inyokern Data Center, possibly to bypass CEQA regulatory processes. Phase I of the Inyokern Data Center is 99 MW, Phase II is 99 MW, for a combined 198 MW. R&L owns additional nearby parcels for possible future expansion. This strategy seems to have been used before by R&L in the Trona 4 and Trona 7 Solar Projects in Inyo County.
12. Tax breaks benefit the corporations, often allowing them large property tax breaks, which then do not bring tax dollars to local community schools and infrastructure.
13. Resources:

•  Environmental and Energy Study Institute: https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-centers-and-water-consumption
• University of Michigan, July 2025: https://stpp.fordschool.umich.edu/sites/stpp/files/2025-07/stpp-data-centers-2025.pdf
• California Energy Commission Project Description: https://www.energy.ca.gov/powerplant/backup-generating-system/rb-inyokern-data-center
• CA State Water Resources Control Board:https://www.iwvwd.com/files/543fda4cb/SixMonth++Consolidation+Letter_Indian+Wells+Valley+WD.pdf
• The Data Heat Island Effect (University of Cambridge): https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.20897

Graphs (for calculations, see the link at the top of the page):