Supersonic jet maker says engines can power data centers, but weighs Colorado exit
Many expect data centers to consume far more power than the current electrical grid can ever deliver.
But Blake Scholl, founder and CEO of Denver-based jet maker Boom Supersonic, argues that “supersonic tech can fix that.”
Even so, Colorado and Denver’s increasingly restrictive data center regulations could prompt the aerospace company to pull chocks and leave.
“North Carolina would love to have us. Texas would love to have us,” Scholl recently told the Wall Street Journal. “We might leave.”
The company, known for its forthcoming Overture supersonic passenger plane, is pivoting. It’s taking the same aircraft engine it developed for flight and adapting it for ground power generation to use in data centers that power much of the world’s artificial intelligence.
With pre-orders from United Airlines, American Airlines, as well as options from Japan Airlines, Boom has no plans to scrap its plans to build the next supersonic passenger plane.
Instead, it aims to leverage the technology in its Symphony jet engine to build hundreds of thousands of engine hours powering some of “the most demanding data centers on earth,” which will accelerate testing — and Boom’s path to commercial supersonic flight.
Powerful and waterless electricity
Boom said “Superpower” is a 42-megawatt natural gas turbine packed into a 40-foot shipping container-sized structure that promises to deliver “reliable” power to AI data centers under a variety of conditions.
“Unlike legacy power turbines, which lose generation capacity when it gets hot outside, Superpower leverages extreme temperature technology to maintain its full capacity — even in demanding locations,” the company said in a press statement. “Superpower does not require water — a substantial advantage for AI data centers where water is often a constrained resource.”
Boom’s Superpower turbine would enable data centers to generate their own power and operate without consuming electricity, Scholl told The Denver Gazette.
“In fact, data centers using Superpower can sell electricity back to the grid, contributing to overall electricity resources,” he said.
Designed for quiet, clean, and waterless operation, Scholl noted that the powerful Superpower turbine operates on clean natural gas and incorporates state-of-the-art technology to minimize emissions and operate quietly.
‘The worst AI bill in the country’
Growing state and local government concerns around the rapid expansion of data centers are making tech folk nervous, industry experts said.
From grid demand and water use to data center construction, scaling the necessary framework to support AI, according to industry insiders, will be a challenge, as experts and policymakers try to do so without simultaneously increasing environmental impact.
“It’s very hard to predict where AI is going,” Lon Huber, senior vice president and chief planning officer for Xcel Energy, said at this year’s convening of the Colorado Climate Week in Boulder. “But if you look at other states, the demand is just booming.”
Earlier in May, the City and County of Denver and Jefferson County imposed temporary moratoriums on new data centers, both citing the need to pump the brakes and evaluate existing local policy, as well as develop guardrails for future development.
“It’s critical for us to evaluate how data centers will interact with the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI), our water supply, the environment and our community’s overall health,” Jefferson County Commissioner Rachel Zenzinger said in a statement from the County. “This moratorium is a necessary pause for us to gather that information.”
For Scholl, who has built a majority of his business around the concept of speed, local moratoriums and increasingly volatile state laws are becoming a real “drag.”
Many local jurisdictions have permitting delays that treat innovators as guilty until proven innocent — making it unnecessarily hard to build basic infrastructure and driving companies like Boom to consider building outside Colorado, he said.
“We find it troubling that Colorado is taking actions that will drive innovation and jobs into other states,” Scholl said.
Colorado lawmakers killed competing bills on data centers, each with a different emphasis and a set of aims, leaving regulation of the facilities in the hands of the Colorado Public Utilities Commission for now.
The action leaves Colorado without new statewide rules even as those opposed to data centers warn the facilities could drive soaring electricity demand, higher utility bills and increased water use. Industry representatives call such concerns overblown.
Scholl told The Denver Gazette that Colorado’s Senate Bill 24-205, which placed consumer protections on artificial intelligence, “was the worst AI bill in the country and never should have been signed into law.”
“It would have made valuable uses of artificial intelligence illegal — and wrapped innovators in red tape,” he said.
He quickly added that the new legislation, which policymakers have touted as addressing the problems of the 2024 law, still means regulations.
“Senate Bill 26-189 is an improvement, but none of these AI regulations serve Colorado’s innovation economy. They will drive investment and jobs elsewhere,” he said.
City business and economic leaders also worry as the number of local municipalities considering data center regulations grows.
“This (City of Denver) moratorium, however well intentioned, sets a troubling precedent for how Denver engages with the local and global business community, and we want to offer a better path forward,” Metro Denver Economic Development Corp. Vice President Daniel Ryley said. “Let me be clear, the Metro Denver EDC does take seriously the concerns that have been raised around energy consumption, water use, community engagement.”
Ryley added: “Those are legitimate policy questions, and the community and the city of Denver are right to want answers, but a blanket moratorium on an entire industry is not the right tool to get there.”
Data center critics gain ally in Erin Brockovich
The backlash on data centers doesn’t stop in just Colorado. Across the country, an increasing number of communities are calling for moratoriums, and in some cases, outright bans on the structures, catching the eye of legal clerk and environmental activist Erin Brockovich.
Brockovich, best known for her work in helping build the landmark case against Pacific Gas and Electric for groundwater contamination in Hinkley, California, has launched a website — www.brockovichdatacenter.com, asking the public to identify and report data center concerns.
Although Brockovich’s site lists some data for Denver, the numbers are not yet consistent with other sites, such as DataCenterMap.com, a commercial outfit that maps the locations of data centers worldwide, brokering information for buyers, sellers, regulators and investors in digital infrastructure.
According to DataCenterMap.com, there are at least four dozen data centers in the Denver Metro area, with 15 clustered around Centennial Airport, which is also home to Boom’s headquarters.
| Data Center | Address | City |
|---|---|---|
| Flexential Denver – Englewood | 8636 S. Peoria St. | Englewood, Colorado |
| Flexential Denver – Parker | 15255 Compark Blvd. | Parker, Colorado |
| Flexential Denver – Centennial | 12500 E. Arapahoe Rd. | Centennial, Colorado |
| Flexential Denver – Aurora | 11900 Cornell Ave. | Aurora, Colorado |
| ColoradoColo | 11100 W. 8th Ave. | Lakewood, Colorado |
| Iron Mountain DEN-1 | 4300 Brighton Blvd. | Denver, Colorado |
| H5 Data Centers Denver | 5350 S. Valentino Way | Greenwood Village, Colorado |
| U.S. Signal Denver CO01 | 8675 Concord Center Dr. | Englewood, Colorado |
| RadiusDC – 1500 Champa | 1500 Champa St. | Denver, Colorado |
| Equinix DE2 | 335 Inverness Dr. S | Englewood, Colorado |
| 365 Data Centers – Aurora | 3431 N. Windsor Dr. | Aurora, Colorado |
| Expedient Centennial | 7437 S. Revere Pkwy. | Centennial, Colorado |
| DataBank DEN1 | 393 Inverness Pkwy. | Englewood, Colorado |
| Csquare DEN1 -A | 9180 Commerce Center Cir. | Highlands Ranch, Colorado |
| Csquare DEN2-A | 8534 Concord Center Dr. | Englewood, Colorado |
| QTS Aurora-Denver Campus | 1160 N. Gun Club Rd. | Aurora, Colorado |
| DataBank DEN4 | 7579 W. 103rd Ave. | Westminster, Colorado |
| DataBank DEN3 | 1500 Champa St. | Denver, Colorado |
| DataBank DEN2 | 6900 S. Peoria St. | Centennial, Colorado |
| CoreSite DEN2 | 639 E. 18th Ave. | Denver, Colorado |
| DataBank DEN5 | 6961 S. Quentin St. | Centennial, Colorado |
| Massive Networks – Louisville | 382 S. Arthur Ave. | Louisville, Colorado |
| Csquare DEN1-B | 9110 Commerce Center Cir. | Highlands Ranch, Colorado |
| Cogent Denver | 4643 S. Ulster St. | Denver, Colorado |
| EdgeConneX DEN01 | 8535 Highfield Pkwy | Englewood, Colorado |
| Centennial Data Center | 9706 E. Easter Ave. | Centennial, Colorado |
| CoreSite DE1 | 910 15th St. | Denver, Colorado |
| CoreSite DE3 | 4900 Race St. (under construction) | Denver, Colorado |
| American Tower EDC Boulder | 9110 Interlocken Loop | Broomfield, Colorado |
| American Tower EDC Denver | 5041 Broadway Ave. | Denver, Colorado |
| Comcast Centennial | 7059 S. Potomac St. | Centennial, Colorado |
| Lumen Denver 1 | 1850 Pearl St. | Denver, Colorado |
| Earthnet Data Center | 4735 Walnut St. | Boulder, Colorado |
| 910 Telecom | 910 15th St. | Denver, Colorado |
| EdgeConnex DEN2 | 8451 Highfield Pkwy. | Englewood, Colorado |
| Thornton Colorado Data Center | 12121 Grant St. | Denver, Colorado |
| Denver Gas & Electric Building | 910 15th St. | Denver, Colorado |
| Equinix DE1 | 9706 E. Easter Ave. | Englewood, Colorado |
| Visa Denver | 8910 Ridgeline Blvd. | Highland Ranch, Colorado |
| Vastnet Denver | 800 E. 73rd Ave. | Denver, Colorado |
| Lumen Aurora | 23901 E. 6th Ave. | Aurora, Colorado |
| Verizon Denver | 313 Inverness Way S. | Englewood, Colorado |
| Icelab Networks | I-25 and County Line Road area | Littleton, Colorado |
| Massive Networks – Boulder | 1919 14th St. | Boulder, Colorado |
| Massive Networks – Denver | 910 15th St. | Denver, Colorado |
| Lumen Denver 2 | 14200 Jewell Ave. | Aurora, Colorado |
| Lumen Denver 3 | 910 15th St. | Denver, Colorado |
| Data Canopy Denver | 900 S. Broadway | Denver, Colorado |
Meanwhile, the Denver City Council is busy forming a working group tasked with assessing the impacts of data center development and crafting policy recommendations to align with current city plans.
Because data centers are not specifically regulated within the City and County of Denver and have no specific permitting requirements, local officials have argued that the moratorium is needed, giving Denver time to develop “thoughtful regulations” that address community safety and equity.
At this time, the CoreSite DE3 facility is the only permitted data center under construction in Denver’s Globeville Elyria-Swansea neighborhood.
Denver Gazette reporter Scott Weiser contributed to this story.