OpenAI is planting one of the largest computing complexes in the country in a stretch of coastal Georgia better known for wetlands than server farms. The ChatGPT maker has committed to a roughly $20 billion data center campus in Effingham County, a rural county about a 45-minute drive from Savannah, in a bid to secure the enormous electricity supply its next generation of AI models will demand. The project would draw as much power as a small city, and it has arrived with both large financial promises and sharp local unease.
Project Camellia and a 1,400-acre site near the Savannah River
The development, code-named Project Camellia, would sit on about 1,400 acres inside the Savannah Gateway Industrial Hub, roughly 12 miles from the Port of Savannah and within a few miles of the Savannah River. Local officials expect it to become the largest data center yet built in Georgia.
The location was not accidental. In its announcement of the project, OpenAI framed the campus as part of a broader push to build domestic AI infrastructure. Effingham County had already been assembling the water and power infrastructure that large industrial users require, positioning it to land exactly this kind of tenant. Proximity to the port, to major transmission lines, and to a river system offered the combination of logistics, electricity, and water that a hyperscale computing site needs to operate around the clock.
3.2 gigawatts and a 25-year power contract
The defining feature of the campus is its appetite for electricity. The facility is designed to consume 3.2 gigawatts of power, delivered in phases between 2028 and 2032, an amount the local utility describes as roughly enough to supply more than two million homes. According to Georgia Power’s statement, its agreement to serve the site ranks among the largest single-facility commitments in the United States, structured as a long-term contract stretching about 25 years.
That 3.2-gigawatt draw represents roughly a third of a 10-gigawatt capacity expansion state regulators granted the utility in December, underscoring how a single AI campus can reshape an entire region’s energy planning. To help meet the load, Georgia Power has been preparing new generation, including an additional combined-cycle gas unit at its Plant McIntosh in nearby Rincon. The utility has said residential electricity prices will not rise to pay for the project, and OpenAI has pledged to curtail its own consumption during periods of peak demand so households are not squeezed first.
Tax abatements, $80 million in pledges, and community pushback
The deal was sweetened with public incentives. The county’s development authority approved a 50 percent property tax abatement running for 15 years, a break that surfaced only after weeks of uncertainty about what company was behind the negotiations. To blunt criticism, OpenAI has committed $80 million in direct community support over the life of the project, money the company says can go toward local priorities such as schools, public safety, health care, workforce training, and housing. The project’s public information page lays out those commitments alongside the roughly 400 long-term jobs the campus is expected to create once operating.
Not everyone is reassured. The secrecy surrounding the negotiations angered many residents, hundreds of whom turned out for a packed community meeting to confront OpenAI representatives after the plans became public. The core tension is familiar to communities across the country now weighing data center offers: a large capital investment and a modest number of permanent jobs, set against tax revenue forgone through abatements and the long-term burden a power-hungry neighbor places on shared infrastructure.
Water, wetlands, and a coastal county under strain
Beyond electricity, the campus raises questions about water and land in a low-lying, flood-prone region. Effingham County has been developing a $320 million water treatment facility capable of drawing up to 24 million gallons a day from the Savannah River, capacity meant partly to serve a nearby Hyundai electric-vehicle plant and now another enormous industrial user. The Savannah River corridor has become a magnet for data center construction, with additional projects announced across the river in South Carolina, compounding demand on the same watershed.
Local conservation advocates warn that converting hundreds more acres of absorbent wetlands into concrete and cooling systems could erode the natural flood protection the county relies on during storms, while stacking new withdrawals onto a river already being tapped by multiple large projects. Those concerns will not stop the campus, but they frame the central bargain Effingham County has struck. In exchange for a marquee tenant and its billions in investment, the county is accepting a decades-long commitment of power, water, and land to the machinery behind a single company’s AI ambitions, a trade being negotiated in dozens of communities as the computing demands of artificial intelligence keep climbing.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by the Morning Overview editorial team.
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