"Here in Paducah, we're proving that America's AI future won't just be in Silicon Valley. It will be built in places like Western Kentucky," Congressman Andy Barr told the audience at the unveiling.
Barr and U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright were among the speakers on hand in Paducah this week to announce what's being billed as one of the largest ever investments in Kentucky — with an eye toward building one of the country's biggest AI data center campuses.
It's exactly the kind of event where Gov. Andy Beshear would normally be on stage. But Beshear's office told the Lexington Herald-Leader the governor was not briefed by any of the companies or agencies involved — and that's left the Democratic leader with open questions about jobs, environmental impacts, taxes and more.
"We are also walking into any and all of these skeptical," Beshear told reporters recently, referring to data center projects.
The governor has left the door open to supporting data center developments, but maintained that the benefits need to be clear and developers need to make the case.
"They need to be able to tell the community and then prove to us that they're not going to have environmental harms," he said. "They also need to be upfront in how big the investment is so that people can see the tax revenue that the school system, the county, and the state are going to get and what could be done with it."
Organizers of the Paducah announcement said Beshear was invited. They also say the 1.8 gigawatt hyperscale data center will include new energy infrastructure that will produce more energy than the center needs.
8,000 temporary construction jobs are expected. Once up and running, developers say 600 permanent jobs will be created.