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As Data Center Opposition Grows, America Needs a Better Blueprint

America’s data center boom is colliding with community opposition, power constraints and a lack of infrastructure planning. The answer is not more construction or more moratoriums, but a smarter model for developing digital hubs that can support communities and the economy.

According to a recent poll, at least seven in 10 Americans would oppose a data center being built near their home, with community opposition rising substantially in just nine months. The NIMBY (“not in my backyard”) movement has stretched coast to coast, and the taboo of inviting data centers has taken a front-row seat in political debates from Maine and California to Texas and Utah. At a moment when Americans seem to agree on little, resistance to data centers has emerged as one of the few issues on which a clear majority can agree. 

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Data centers can consume enormous amounts of electricity and, depending on their design and location, can put pressure on water supplies, roads, transmission infrastructure and local communities. But the question facing the U.S. is not whether data centers should be built. It’s how, where and under what conditions. 

Moratoriums are spreading

Politicians are responding. Moratoriums, characterized as “pauses” rather than longer-term prohibitions, have recently been enacted or proposed throughout the country. New York state has a ban on construction for facilities of 50 megawatts or more for the next year. Texas’s Gov. Greg Abbott has ordered a pause on new interconnections into the state’s electricity grid. Arizona has approved a moratorium on sales-tax exemptions. Illinois and Ohio are also pausing some incentives. Florida, typically averse to regulation, now requires hyperscalers to bear their own electricity costs. Virginia, home to the world’s largest data center hubs in its Data Center Alley, has adopted a new electricity tax. And Maine voters recently approved a moratorium, which Gov. Janet Mills vetoed. There are also more than two dozen local moratoriums and prohibitions in Michigan alone, with local actions in more than a dozen other states. 

This populist surge has also reached the Western United States, where water can be scarce, land is plentiful and electricity has historically been relatively inexpensive. Arizona surpassed one gigawatt (GW) of data center consumption and has recently passed the 2 GW mark. Nevada is approaching a gigawatt of capacity. Utah continues to look attractive to data center developers even as one ambitious project has been scaled back by 75 percent, amid calls for greater transparency, impact reviews and protection from rising electricity rates.

The moratoriums reflect a sense that data center developers are moving faster than communities can assess the consequences and that the A.I. boom fueling much of that growth may promise job displacement and other social costs alongside........

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