I spent this week reviewing the primary motivations for conflict in these numerous data center fights and speaking with representatives of the data center sector and relevant connected enterprises, like electrical manufacturing. I am now convinced that the industry knows it has a profound challenge on its hands. Folks are doing a lot to address it, from good-neighbor promises to lobbying efforts at the state and federal level. But much more work will need to be done to avoid repeating mistakes that have bedeviled other industries that face similar land use backlash cycles, such as fossil fuel extraction, mining, and renewable energy infrastructure development.
Two primary issues undergird the data center mega-backlash we’re seeing today: energy use fears and water consumption confusion.
Starting with energy, it’s important to say that data center development currently correlates with higher electricity rates in areas where projects are being built, but the industry challenges the presumption that it is solely responsible for that phenomenon. In the eyes of opponents, utilities are scrambling to construct new power supplies to meet projected increases in energy demand, and this in turn is sending bills higher.
That’s because, as I’ve previously explained, data centers are getting power in two ways: off the existing regional electric grid or from on-site generation, either from larger new facilities (like new gas plants or solar farms) or diesel generators for baseload, backup purposes. But building new power infrastructure on site takes time, and speed is the name of the game right now in the AI race, so many simply attach to the existing grid.
Areas with rising electricity bills are more likely to ban or restrict data center development. Let’s just take one example: Aurora, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago and the second most-populous city in the state. Aurora instituted a 180-day moratorium on data center development last fall after receiving numerous complaints about data centers from residents, including a litany related to electricity bills. More than 1.5 gigawatts of data center capacity already operate in the surrounding Kane County, where residential electricity rates are at a three-year high and expected to increase over the near term – contributing to a high risk of opposition against new projects.
The second trouble spot is water, which data centers need to cool down their servers. Project developers have face a huge hurdle in the form of viral stories of households near data centers who suddenly lack a drop to drink. Prominent examples activists bring up include this tale of a family living next to a Meta facility in Newton County, Georgia, and this narrative of people living around an Amazon Web Services center in St. Joseph County, Indiana. Unsurprisingly, the St. Joseph County Council rejected a new data center in response to, among other things, very vocal water concerns. (It’s worth noting that the actual harm caused to water systems by data centers is at times both over- and under-stated, depending on the facility and location.)
“I think it’s very important for the industry as a whole to be honest that living next to [a data center] is not an ideal situation,” said Caleb Max, CEO of the National Artificial Intelligence Association, a new D.C.-based trade group launched last year that represents Oracle and myriad AI companies.
Polling shows that data centers are less popular than the use of artificial intelligence overall, Max told me, so more needs to be done to communicate the benefits that come from their development – including empowering AI. “The best thing the industry could start to do is, for the people in these zip codes with the data centers, those people need to more tangibly feel the benefits of it.”
Many in the data center development space are responding quickly to these concerns. Companies are clearly trying to get out ahead on energy, with the biggest example arriving this week from Microsoft, which pledged to pay more for the electricity it uses to power its data centers. “It’s about balancing that demand and market with these concerns. That’s why you're seeing the industry lean in on these issues and more proactively communicating with communities,” said Dan Diorio, state policy director for the Data Center Coalition.
There’s also an effort underway to develop national guidance for data centers led by the National Electrical Manufacturers Association, the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers, and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, expected to surface publicly by this summer. Some of the guidance has already been published, such as this document on energy storage best practices, which is intended to help data centers know how to properly use solutions that can avoid diesel generators, an environmental concern in communities. But the guidance will ultimately include discussions of cooling, too, which can be a water-intensive practice.
“It’s a great example of an instance where industry is coming together and realizing there’s a need for guidance. There’s a very rapidly developing sector here that uses electricity in a fundamentally different way, that’s almost unprecedented,” Patrick Hughes, senior vice president of strategy, technical, and industry affairs for NEMA, told me in an interview Monday.
Personally, I’m unsure whether these voluntary efforts will be enough to assuage the concerns of local officials. It certainly isn’t convincing folks like Jon Green, a member of the Board of Supervisors in Johnson County, Iowa. Johnson County is a populous area, home to the University of Iowa campus, and Green told me that to date it hasn’t really gotten any interest from data center developers. But that didn’t stop the county from instituting a one-year moratorium in 2025 to block projects and give time for them to develop regulations.
I asked Green if there’s a form of responsible data center development. “I don’t know if there is, at least where they’re going to be economically feasible,” he told me. “If we say they’ve got to erect 40 wind turbines and 160 acres of solar in order to power a data center, I don’t know if when they do their cost analysis that it’ll pencil out.”
