Data Centers Are the New NIMBY Battleground
Packed hearings. Facebook organizing. Complaints about prime farmland and a disappearing way of life. Sound familiar?
Solar and wind companies cite the rise of artificial intelligence to make their business cases after the United States government slashed massive tax incentives for their projects.
But the data centers supposed to power the AI boom are now facing the sort of swift wave of rejections from local governments across the country eerily similar to what renewables developers have been dealing with on the ground over the last decade. The only difference is, this land use techlash feels even more sudden, intense, and culturally diffuse.
What’s happening is simple: Data centers are now routinely being denied by local governments in zoning and permitting decisions after local residents turn against them. These aggrieved denizens organize grassroots campaigns, many with associated Facebook groups, and then flood city council and county commission hearings.
Just take this past week. Last Thursday, Prince George’s County, Maryland, paused all data center permitting after a campaign against converting an abandoned mall into a data center gained traction online, with a petition garnering more than 20,000 signatures. On Monday, faced with a ferocious public outcry, Google rescinded a proposal to build what would’ve been its second data center in Indiana in Franklin Township, a community in southeastern Indianapolis – a withdrawal requested mere minutes before the township council was reportedly going to reject it.
That same day, the rural Illinois town of DeKalb denied a solar company’s request to build a “boutique data center” on the same site as a previously-permitted solar farm. And on Tuesday, the small city of Howell – located smack between Lansing and Detroit, Michigan – denied a data center proposed by an anonymous Fortune 100 company. Apparently, so many people showed up to voice their opposition to the project that the hearing was held in a high school gymnasium.
Opponents cite many things in their arguments against development, some unique to the sector like energy and water use, and others familiar to the solar and wind industry, like preserving prime farmland or maintaining a way of life.
These arguments are incredibly salient, as polling conducted by Heatmap News has revealed: less than half of Americans would ever support a data center coming near them, and this technology infrastructure is less popular than any form of renewable energy. Digging into the cross-tabs of that poll, data centers are unpopular with essentially all age demographics, and arguments against the facilities – like “they use too much water” or “they consume too much electricity” – get relatively similar agreement from registered Democrats and Republicans alike.
Ben Inskeep, a clean energy advocate in Indianapolis, told me he started fighting data centers last year after he became aware of the total power needed to fuel the rising number of projects in the state. His advocacy organization, Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana, previously weighed in on rate hikes and electricity generation decisions. Now, they’re tracking more than 40 data center projects they say are proposed in the state and getting involved in the fight on the ground against them.
Inskeep told me that, from his point of view, the primary support for data centers comes from local governments and municipally-funded works like schools and health facilities that are facing slashed budgets. In some cases the projects are being rejected despite representing millions – even billions – in capital investments and potential tax revenues so large that municipal governments are put between a rock and a hard place as they’re pressured by a weakening economy and state funding cuts.
That’s what happened in Indianapolis. Earlier this month the school district that would’ve been funded by the now-rejected Google data center came out in support of the project, declaring it would welcome new tax revenue, and said it would also lead to new educational partnerships with the tech giant. But none of that mattered. Some local officials even lambasted their colleagues' support as unwarranted, a lashing out that reminds me of what happens to pro-solar officials in Ohio.
Heatmap News has been tracking contested data center projects since the spring of this year and has found almost 100 projects under development across the country that are being actively fought by local organizers, citizens advocacy groups, and environmental organizations. The data is preliminary and likely an undercount.
Still, there’s lots to glean from it. Crucially, as we’ve seen with renewable energy development, data center opposition crops up most often in tandem with the number of projects proposed and constructed. This is only logical: the more of something that is built in a place, the more likely people are to say, “We’ve built enough of that.” This is why Virginia is the top state when it comes to data centers being opposed – it’s a hub that’s seen development spike for far longer than elsewhere in the United States.
I believe that as data center project proposals continue to rise across the country, we’ll see in parallel rising hostility to their development – potentially much larger than anything renewable energy has ever faced. It will undoubtedly also be a problem for anyone in solar or wind who is riding on an AI boom to add demand for their projects.
