AI data centers are taking over. These Americans are fighting back

In a rare moment of bipartisanship, there’s a force uniting Americans across the country: opposition to data centers.

In nearly every state, hyperscale data centers powering artificial intelligence are being proposed and built. These facilities need much more computing power compared to other data centers and that comes with a much larger footprint, in the literal and carbon sense. A typical hyperscale data center needs 10 acres, or 435,000 square feet of land. However, many of these proposed sites plan to use over 1 million square feet, which could fit a few Eiffel towers or roughly 50 Boeing 737 jets.

The list of potential drawbacks for communities receiving a data center are plentiful. The huge increased pressure on energy grids translates to higher utility bills, which puts additional strain on gas and coal plants, which of course jacks up toxic air pollution. Furthermore, the centers’ cooling systems need a lot of water, draining local aquifers and water tables, with the more efficient systems still requiring significant amounts. Even noise pollution from constant humming of the servers impacts local quality of life.

“When we bring this massive amount of electricity demand to the grid, and there’s a couple ways the grid can respond,” Jeremiah Johnson, an environmental researcher at North Carolina State University, said. “One is we have existing power plants that aren’t used at their full capacity, and we increase their output. Another way it can respond is neighboring regions can increase their output and ship electricity by transmission to where the data centers are, and a third option would be to build new power plants.”

Johnson’s recently published research found that the increased pressure on the energy grid from new data centers will have extreme effects on both energy costs and carbon emissions in the next four years. By 2030, national energy prices may have an average increase of up to 29%, with areas that have high concentrations of data centers like northern Virginia expecting an almost 60% increase in costs. This pressure on the grid also means, as Johnson explained, more energy will need to be produced, either through new plants or increased production at existing plants.

“ In our base case run, it was a 28% increase in CO2 emissions across the power sector as a whole, so a really sizable increase from a scenario that did not have additional data centers,” he told Salon. “Lots of additional coal and natural gas generation is attributable to that additional electricity demand.”

Local coalitions of neighbors are springing up in the most rural towns and counties as quiet, nature-filled lands are being replaced with loud, energy intensive data centers. Groups, often regardless of political affiliation, are fighting back in town council meetings and local government sessions where most of these projects are approved.

Kayleigh Henry is one organizer taking to council meetings and zoning boards to advocate against data center construction in New Jersey — and it’s working. As the ecology director at the nonprofit Climate Revolution Action Network, the 20-year-old has helped put a stop to multiple data centers across New Jersey and pushed for ordinances to ban their construction altogether.

In organizing against a proposed 1 million square foot data center in Monroe Township, New Jersey, Henry protested with over 100 community members at multiple city council meetings discussing the project.

”After about three to four council meetings, they finally understood the importance of actually banning these centers because the people cared so much,” Henry told Salon. “Without a doubt, every single meeting I went to, over 100 people went and tried to speak and tell the council how much it meant to them that their community stays safe and is not affected by these data centers.”

With guidance from Henry’s organization, Monroe, Millville and Andover townships passed AI data centers bans or restrictions. Across the nation, similar stories are playing out as communities stand up to some of the biggest names in tech, like OpenAI and Google. However, the fight is far from easy and victory is not inevitable.

Often these projects are approved with little to no input from community members, either because they flew under the radar or because companies bulldozed their way into building them anyway. A small farm town in Michigan voted against a proposed data center, but the developers sued and the municipality was forced to settle. This isn’t just an average hyperscale project — it’s a $16 billion, 250 acre OpenAI and Oracle campus.

This campus will draw 1.4 gigawatts of energy, or enough to power the entire city of San Diego, California. For reference, the Delorean time machine in Back to the Future needed 1.21 gigawatts — a figure so comically large it could only be harnessed from plutonium or a bolt of lighting.

Some proposed projects get even more extreme, such as the energy needed for a data center underway in Utah. Originally proposed at an estimated nine gigawatts, the center would use more energy than the entire state twice over. Only after dogged protests and local disapproval did the authority overseeing the project demand it be scaled back. As of June 4, the project site will be cut in half from 40,000 acres to 20,000 and the actual center itself likely taking up about 10,000 acres.

The project also plans to have its own natural gas plant onsite to produce energy. While developers argue this is beneficial to remain independent from Utah’s power grid, it would still be highly pollutant and unlikely to account for all the center’s energy needs.

“ Some data centers really want to make sure that they have reliable, uninterruptible power, and so they’re putting generators on site,” Johnson of North Carolina State University explained. “But those generators onsite also carry with them local pollutants that are kind of borne by the community right by the data center as well.”

The authority overseeing the project is under its own scrutiny. The Military Installation Development Authority (MIDA) is a quasi-governmental agency meant to “to support Utah’s economic growth and defense-related infrastructure.”

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The project, called Stratos, is located in Box Elder County, Utah where local officials have no jurisdiction over the project. “MIDA projects do not go through the standard local land use approval processes,” the county explained in a press release.

“The nature of the type of data center being contemplated will specifically cater to hyperscale providers who include the federal government and related defense industry users as clients,” MIDA wrote in a May 4 press release on the project area plans.

“Why do we need a nine gigawatt data center in one of the driest states in the nation that’s in a severe drought,” Caroline Gleich, an environmentalist and professional skier, asked. Gleich, who was also Utah’s democratic nominee for Senate in 2024, utilizes her online platform of nearly 400,000 combined followers to raise awareness about the Stratos project.

“ It’s really brought a lot of Utahns together,” she told Salon. “People across the state are really concerned about the environmental impact, the land use, and really about the process through which this whole thing came to be.”

The process of the center getting approved outside of traditional means, has vexed many Utahns who didn’t get a say in the construction of this monumental energy use project. Gleich also takes issue with also the face of the Stratos project — Shark Tank personality Kevin O’Leary.

“Why isn’t a foreigner, an Emirati, Canadian and Irish citizen, the face of this project if it’s for national security?” she said. O’Leary himself accused Gleich of being funded by foreign interests in an NBC interview. Gleich said she has never been paid for her activism by foreign operated organizations

“ As a Utahn and as someone who spent a lot of my precious free time that I would rather be spending doing other things, trying to advocate for this, they keep calling us paid protesters and out of state and all these things, defaming Utahns that are trying to protect our state,” Gliech said. “Instead of actually listening to us and providing evidence of studies or environmental impact statements, we just get called names and bullied and defamed on national television.”

Nevertheless, she remains persistent in her advocacy against this project and preserving Utah’s environmental health. Her advice for pushing back against figures like O’Leary and Big Tech is to hit the ballot box and don’t skip local elections.

“ It’s gonna take a massive amount of turnout at the polls this November in order to hold them accountable, and that’s really the lever of change,” she said. “ Vote out every single one of them that have been complicit or supportive of these projects — vote them all out.”

Henry of New Jersey’s Climate Revolution Action Network agrees and advocates for concerned citizens to turn out not just to the voting booth but to local council meetings.

“ One of the main things is actually just being involved in your community or even different communities,” she said. “Just going to these council meetings, even if you may not be from that town, just going to learn about how things work.”

It is in these jargon-rich, usually quiet meetings where so many data centers are approved without second thought. So, Henry became familiar with local zoning and planning and that intimate knowledge allowed her to propose actionable changes like data center bans.

Making noise, online and in local government meetings, is where organizers are succeeding across the country in their goals of stopping new center construction. Ever still, major projects are still underway across the country and many will feel their consequences.

“ Once our water is gone and our air is polluted, our cities and our homes are gonna be unlivable,” Gleich said. “So we need to make sure that we’re holding these people accountable and stay eternally vigilant with everything that’s happening.