Data centers are unpopular among U.S. citizens right now, with projects facing resistance and moratoriums across the nation. While we’ve seen over a hundred protests against the developments happen simultaneously, researcher Andy Masley wanted to answer one question: what is driving the pushback against these projects? Is it big tech? AI skepticism? Or maybe even China? But after reviewing data from multiple polls, his answer seems quite simple: the “object-level local environmental and economic harms” that have been widely reported in the media.
Multiple data center sites owned and operated by different hyperscalers have found themselves in hot water with the people surrounding them. The biggest issue that caught the attention of the public is the massive amounts of electricity that these developments use, requiring grid operators like PJM Interconnection to expand their infrastructure to service AI data center needs, which costs billions of dollars. Unfortunately, the capital expenditure for these upgrades has typically been passed on equally to all users, with ratepayers seeing price hikes of up to 76% on their utility bills.
