Rising opposition disrupting data center plans: report

About 45 data center projects worth US$68 billion were blocked or delayed by local pushback from April to June due to mounting opposition in the US, research group Data Center Watch said yesterday.

Communities across the nation are now pushing through moratoriums on new construction, often before developers can apply for permissions. About 30 statehouses introduced or adopted rules pertaining to issues such as data center siting, electricity and water, the group said in a report provided to Bloomberg News.

The research quantifies growing concern about the rapid pace of expansion of artificial intelligence (AI), both in the construction of new computing clusters and its proliferation into daily life. There are now 843 opposition groups across 49 states, with Hawaii the exception.

William Lawrence, Democratic candidate for US House of Representatives in Michigan’s 7th District, speaks about artificial intelligence and data centers during a campaign event on Thursday in Mason, Michigan.

Photo: AP

“New groups continue to emerge, opposition is appearing across a wide range of states and jurisdictions, and online petition signatures continue to grow,” lead analyst Miquel Vila said.

Data Center Watch is a project from AI intelligence company 10a Labs.

Home to the biggest investors in AI infrastructure, the US is experiencing a bipartisan backlash against facilities that critics say harm the environment and siphon away resources to fuel AI systems that many fear would imperil jobs and livelihoods.

Tech giants such as Amazon.com Inc, Meta Platforms Inc, Microsoft Corp and Alphabet Inc — the so-called hyperscalers — argue they need the facilities to win a race against China to develop potentially world-changing AI.

US President Donald Trump has dismissed opposition to data centers and concern about advances in AI as a “sick conspiracy,” saying “the only one that is happy about it is China.”

The number and value of disrupted projects fluctuates by quarter, with the first three months of this year seeing 75 cases worth roughly US$130 billion facing opposition in the US.

The 45 projects affected during the second quarter represented more than half of all new large-scale developments Data Center Watch began tracking during the period.

Opposition by public figures and the use of social media are amplifying concerns. One petition against a project in Tennessee garnered more than 500,000 signatures on online activism platform Change.org, accounting for more than one-third of those on the service during the quarter, it said.

For the first time since it began its research two years ago, Data Center Watch also reported on protests against data centers outside the US, given increased international opposition. Much as in the US, local campaigns are targeting specific projects, governments’ planning authorizations and worries about resource usage, sometimes coordinating nationally. The group highlighted opposition across European nations, Australia, South Africa and beyond.

“As with many other trends, the US has generally been at the forefront, but the phenomenon is increasingly becoming global,” Vila said. “We anticipate that this will just become more prominent as data center development expands across the globe.”