The plant that will generate electricity for the data complex would be powered “100 percent off the Ruby Pipeline,” a MIDA official said in April.

But after weeks of protests, reams of comments against the project, and disgruntled Utahns digging into state leaders’ finances and family businesses, the state’s Republican governor has now asserted the project will “never” be solely powered by natural gas.

“That’s never going to happen,” Governor Spencer Cox told The Salt Lake Tribune last week. “The very first phase will be natural gas, but the other phases should not be. They should be nuclear, and they should be geothermal, and solar and other technology.”

Skip the nukes please

roger that!

The project is supported in large part by major soy traders, including the American grain giant Cargill. Cargill and the Brazilian developers argue the railway is essential for economic growth in the region and is part of a broader effort in the northern Amazon to improve infrastructure and facilitate grain exports.