I didn't see anything that addressed the health concerns, ruined property values and mental health issues with having to live next to one of these disgusting behemoths. Why are all of you smart, tech-addicted rich people completely ignoring these harsh realities? The uprising of the "peons" is purely about that and increased utility bills and destroyed water resources - basic quality of life issues. And the fact that the majority of the existing data center deals were done with ZERO public knowledge. That is pure fascist, dictatorial treatment of the people. I now see that energy geeks are playing the exact same smoke and mirrors game as tech bros, finance bros, and the wealthy at large. we the "poor" masses will fight these centers until building and f
ueling them is done properly safely, and not at the expense of our pocketbooks, livehoods and health.
This tracks with what I keep seeing and the backlash isn’t really “anti-AI,” it’s more like “why am I the one absorbing the cost of your infrastructure.” The batteries-in-basements point is the one that gets me. If the money’s already there, the fact that developers default to fighting communities instead of just paying them off tells you it was never really about cost. It was about not having to ask.
Tech people acting confused as to why the rest of us are skeptical about AI isn't going to make us less skeptical. As far as 99% of the public knows the only upside to AI is students have an easier time cheating.
You address the energy advantages of the data centers and someone else mentioned the water usage. There is also the other environmental impact for current data centers like backup generator exhaust and sound pollution. The thing that I see in my local community of Hillsboro, Oregon, is the massive tax breaks that are being given to these data centers. These are typically a minimum of 5 years with hidden extensions up to as many as 25 years for expansion of existing data centers. This combined with the very minimal employment and the profits for the giant corporations that s do not stay in the community, there is very little advantage to local communities. Money is not going into local improvements to things like schools and infrastructure for some time, if ever. Who knows if there will be a bubble that bursts down the road about the time these data centers finally become required to pay their fair share of taxes. Seems like a boom for those like Musk, Bezos, Zukerberg, etc and very little for the community.
I don't think we can compare data centers to other large industrial customers. Other large industrial customers such as manufacturing generally employ large numbers of local people at good wages once they are built. Data centers do not, and as pointed out early in your conversation, these data centers are threatening employment. Most of the billions of dollars spent on data centers is for computer chips so all that money is flowing out of the community, and even out of the country. Data center opposition has grown so fast because there is so much to fear/hate about it and sol little to like!! Lastly, tell me again what these things can do that truly cannot be done without them? I have never heard an answer to that question.
Thank you to David and Jigar for putting out good information. One can only hope political staff are listening and rise to the occasion. In Oregon we are going with BEYONCE which, I think, is the right approach. The clean energy being the important part.
In the US, trust for data centers went out the window on January 20, 2025, when the oligarchs who push data centers and AI on everyone whether they want them or not flanked Donald Trump at his inauguration. We now have the most blatantly corrupt federal government ever, and those in attendance that day are now working to fleece American citizens at every opportunity. Musk went as far as to violently slash the workforce and funding of scores of programs that Americans hold dear, which helped cement people's view of these folks as autocratic, clueless technocrats willing to destroy the things we value for their own obscenely high profits.
Cap that with public service commissions and public utility commissions that approve data center siting permits over the strong, nearly unanimous objections of the people who live in the community, as happened in Saline, Michigan. People don't want these companies to "buy their consent." Local residents want to determine whether they want the facilities in their communities at all, and if they do, to lay out the terms under which they are sited and will operate. People don't trust politicians or regulators to do this properly. For decades, PSCs and PUCs in Michigan and California (the two states I've lived in) have sited fossil power plants and other dirty, noisy, polluting facilities in areas that didn't have the political clout to stop them, and they continue to do so.
I worked as a technical writer in the energy industry in California for decades, and the most important lessons I learned about getting approval and siting for new facilities were: (1) have open and engaging conversations with the community, with a heavy emphasis on listening; (2) demonstrate that you understand their concerns in how you develop your project and how you present it to them; and (3) collaborate with community leaders (and by this I don't mean politicians). And if approved, provide real benefits to the community and operate the facility responsibly. That's what prevents a backlash--a genuine desire to value local input and build something that will benefit everyone.
I've skipped about 4-5 Volts in a row, now, because they're basically about American political problems. Which is becoming an eye-roll subject to Canadians, like having to read over and over again why Americans can't have health care.
At least in the first minutes I heard nothing about water use, and yet that is one of the major objections voiced. Adequate clean water is a concern in much of the country. Is the cooling issue solved without tapping into precious aquifers? Help us ignorant folks…
The feminine energy of renewables is a smoke screen and/or they are lying to themselves.
The problem is control and politics. Distributed systems mean you need to deal with people. All these people (even the blue state governors) want control they are hard wired for being in control. Distributed systems are not firm because they are not a thing that they control fully.
These people would rather pay $200 for a tank of gas than have to share a train seat with anybody. Doubly so if they have to share with someone who is of a different class or race.
You have all made the case for a moratorium on data centers, and personally, I don't think just postponing data center approval until after the November elections is long enough. Getting these centers right -- including the right number and the right purposes and mitigated environmental impacts and whether we need them at all -- is going to take a lot longer than just postponing their approvals until after November. I take issue with Arnab Pal's framing of housing shortage issues as being a problem because of NIMBYs and coastal protection in California. This is thoughtless and uninformed. My own street is San Francisco has been rezoned for taller buildings. In general, I don't have an issue with that. What I do have an issue with is the demolition of hundreds of small businesses and the housing above those businesses that has now been incentivized. Our Board of Supervisors has passed regulations protecting buildings with three or more units of rent stabilized housing (which includes the building where I live), but not buildings with one or two units of housing or ground-floor small businesses. And I believe in protecting coastal California from being turned into another Miami, especially in light of sea level rise.
Thanks. I agree that Jigar and many others have many good technical ideas that can make the grid less expensive by using it more efficiently. I disagree with him and others that we can push the grid far beyond its current loads. I like the large safety measures built into it. its served the US for decades and decades. Pushing everything electrical increases failures, increases replacement costs etc.
But the article is about why people don't like data centers, and none of the ideas presented actually address the added load specific to data centers. Often with cost incentives, transmission costs etc that are added to rate payers bills. This kinda has a tendency to piss people off. Yes it's true that DC's have become the poster child for all rate increases whether accurate or not, and its usually not. And thats my point, data centers are adding to the costs to rate payers in most cases, not making those costs go down. Until that changes and the only way I can see it is if the DC's have to actually pay for their electricity in such a way that other rate payers in that utility don't have a rate increase, then there will continue to be a growing and successful anti data center revolt. Making the grid more efficient to allow subsidized low cost energy for data centers is backwards. I am not a believer that AI/DC is the savior of the US economy. It is going to be a part of the future for sure. And as David said, and I agree that plentiful inexpensive energy is much more of an advantage to the country than DC's. It encourages manufacturing, more comfortable living, innovation, jobs etc.
Thanks to the comments. I definitely side on they don’t seem clued into what the people are pissed off about. Water use/water pollution , noise, air pollution, few jobs, little to no tax base increase and higher not lower electric rates and potentially power outages to keep the data center online. I mean sure I want that in my community. But if you’re an investment advisor then yes you have to push data centers.
What I havent seen is this mythical data center making electricity cheaper thing. It sounds good but as far as I can tell there isn’t a single example of this happening, even with many thousands of data centers. And if there was one or a few examples shouldn’t they be widely discussed as how to do it right? Both from getting the info out and also for communities to be able to make sure any data centers going in their area are using this design to make sure their rates go down not up.
Re: making electricity cheaper, Jigar Shah's new mantra is "use the grid we've already paid for". In part he's talking about familiar topics like VPPs, GETs, and Demand Flexibility. I suspect a deep dive might get you a concrete plan, somewhere.
I don't think the utilities will cooperate, en masse, anytime soon.
This issue is so funny to me. Walk into any environmental science department in any university in USA and you will find professionals of human dimensions and resource development with stakeholder engagement. Entire courses for undergrads. Cornell University has an entire program for this. Of course, they are in the ecology department so economists and pundits will never know about them. The comments to this piece are revealing. Answers are out there, just in ecology departments, so we suffer whatever this is instead.
The *infinity* energy appetite of AI "data centers" is truly the final death knell for any hope that we're going to somehow stabilize our energy consumption and spare ourselves climate catastrophe. (although crypto was a nice warmup for this situation). If anything that we've been lead to passionately believe about the dire need for conservation, renewables, etc. is actually true, then data centers must be stopped dead in their tracks.
Working in the renewables space for 20+ years, and actually caring about the reasons we need it, renders the data center buildout agonizing to a degree not yet considered.
We are right in the middle of this in Texas. Expecting to hear back today on baseload designation. Abbott forced ERCOT and PUC to pause. He could easily have acheived the exact same result by asking for confirmation that the Batch zero process would do what he believes is necessary. But that wasn't the point, was it? He wanted to send a message. What is the message? Politics always trumps business? Batch zero accomplishes what he wants, btw. He could easily have asked ERCOT to consider adding more community benefits.
As other commentors have noted, the costs and benefits of data centres were not really reviewed in this discussion. It is kind of an important omission. The reality is that your average person sees no benefits. If they trusted local leaders to leverage these centres to the benefit of the community, they would be on-board. The backlash is not ignorance, it's an indictment of tech bros and politicians.
I didn't see anything that addressed the health concerns, ruined property values and mental health issues with having to live next to one of these disgusting behemoths. Why are all of you smart, tech-addicted rich people completely ignoring these harsh realities? The uprising of the "peons" is purely about that and increased utility bills and destroyed water resources - basic quality of life issues. And the fact that the majority of the existing data center deals were done with ZERO public knowledge. That is pure fascist, dictatorial treatment of the people. I now see that energy geeks are playing the exact same smoke and mirrors game as tech bros, finance bros, and the wealthy at large. we the "poor" masses will fight these centers until building and f
ueling them is done properly safely, and not at the expense of our pocketbooks, livehoods and health.
Guess it’s just our lowly animal spirits not sophisticated enough to understand 😒
This tracks with what I keep seeing and the backlash isn’t really “anti-AI,” it’s more like “why am I the one absorbing the cost of your infrastructure.” The batteries-in-basements point is the one that gets me. If the money’s already there, the fact that developers default to fighting communities instead of just paying them off tells you it was never really about cost. It was about not having to ask.
Tech people acting confused as to why the rest of us are skeptical about AI isn't going to make us less skeptical. As far as 99% of the public knows the only upside to AI is students have an easier time cheating.
You address the energy advantages of the data centers and someone else mentioned the water usage. There is also the other environmental impact for current data centers like backup generator exhaust and sound pollution. The thing that I see in my local community of Hillsboro, Oregon, is the massive tax breaks that are being given to these data centers. These are typically a minimum of 5 years with hidden extensions up to as many as 25 years for expansion of existing data centers. This combined with the very minimal employment and the profits for the giant corporations that s do not stay in the community, there is very little advantage to local communities. Money is not going into local improvements to things like schools and infrastructure for some time, if ever. Who knows if there will be a bubble that bursts down the road about the time these data centers finally become required to pay their fair share of taxes. Seems like a boom for those like Musk, Bezos, Zukerberg, etc and very little for the community.
I don't think we can compare data centers to other large industrial customers. Other large industrial customers such as manufacturing generally employ large numbers of local people at good wages once they are built. Data centers do not, and as pointed out early in your conversation, these data centers are threatening employment. Most of the billions of dollars spent on data centers is for computer chips so all that money is flowing out of the community, and even out of the country. Data center opposition has grown so fast because there is so much to fear/hate about it and sol little to like!! Lastly, tell me again what these things can do that truly cannot be done without them? I have never heard an answer to that question.
Thank you to David and Jigar for putting out good information. One can only hope political staff are listening and rise to the occasion. In Oregon we are going with BEYONCE which, I think, is the right approach. The clean energy being the important part.
Please explain what BEYONCE stands for, I don't know what you're talking about. Thanks.
Bring Your Own Clean Energy to go with your data center.
In the US, trust for data centers went out the window on January 20, 2025, when the oligarchs who push data centers and AI on everyone whether they want them or not flanked Donald Trump at his inauguration. We now have the most blatantly corrupt federal government ever, and those in attendance that day are now working to fleece American citizens at every opportunity. Musk went as far as to violently slash the workforce and funding of scores of programs that Americans hold dear, which helped cement people's view of these folks as autocratic, clueless technocrats willing to destroy the things we value for their own obscenely high profits.
Cap that with public service commissions and public utility commissions that approve data center siting permits over the strong, nearly unanimous objections of the people who live in the community, as happened in Saline, Michigan. People don't want these companies to "buy their consent." Local residents want to determine whether they want the facilities in their communities at all, and if they do, to lay out the terms under which they are sited and will operate. People don't trust politicians or regulators to do this properly. For decades, PSCs and PUCs in Michigan and California (the two states I've lived in) have sited fossil power plants and other dirty, noisy, polluting facilities in areas that didn't have the political clout to stop them, and they continue to do so.
I worked as a technical writer in the energy industry in California for decades, and the most important lessons I learned about getting approval and siting for new facilities were: (1) have open and engaging conversations with the community, with a heavy emphasis on listening; (2) demonstrate that you understand their concerns in how you develop your project and how you present it to them; and (3) collaborate with community leaders (and by this I don't mean politicians). And if approved, provide real benefits to the community and operate the facility responsibly. That's what prevents a backlash--a genuine desire to value local input and build something that will benefit everyone.
I've skipped about 4-5 Volts in a row, now, because they're basically about American political problems. Which is becoming an eye-roll subject to Canadians, like having to read over and over again why Americans can't have health care.
At least in the first minutes I heard nothing about water use, and yet that is one of the major objections voiced. Adequate clean water is a concern in much of the country. Is the cooling issue solved without tapping into precious aquifers? Help us ignorant folks…
The feminine energy of renewables is a smoke screen and/or they are lying to themselves.
The problem is control and politics. Distributed systems mean you need to deal with people. All these people (even the blue state governors) want control they are hard wired for being in control. Distributed systems are not firm because they are not a thing that they control fully.
These people would rather pay $200 for a tank of gas than have to share a train seat with anybody. Doubly so if they have to share with someone who is of a different class or race.
You have all made the case for a moratorium on data centers, and personally, I don't think just postponing data center approval until after the November elections is long enough. Getting these centers right -- including the right number and the right purposes and mitigated environmental impacts and whether we need them at all -- is going to take a lot longer than just postponing their approvals until after November. I take issue with Arnab Pal's framing of housing shortage issues as being a problem because of NIMBYs and coastal protection in California. This is thoughtless and uninformed. My own street is San Francisco has been rezoned for taller buildings. In general, I don't have an issue with that. What I do have an issue with is the demolition of hundreds of small businesses and the housing above those businesses that has now been incentivized. Our Board of Supervisors has passed regulations protecting buildings with three or more units of rent stabilized housing (which includes the building where I live), but not buildings with one or two units of housing or ground-floor small businesses. And I believe in protecting coastal California from being turned into another Miami, especially in light of sea level rise.
Thanks. I agree that Jigar and many others have many good technical ideas that can make the grid less expensive by using it more efficiently. I disagree with him and others that we can push the grid far beyond its current loads. I like the large safety measures built into it. its served the US for decades and decades. Pushing everything electrical increases failures, increases replacement costs etc.
But the article is about why people don't like data centers, and none of the ideas presented actually address the added load specific to data centers. Often with cost incentives, transmission costs etc that are added to rate payers bills. This kinda has a tendency to piss people off. Yes it's true that DC's have become the poster child for all rate increases whether accurate or not, and its usually not. And thats my point, data centers are adding to the costs to rate payers in most cases, not making those costs go down. Until that changes and the only way I can see it is if the DC's have to actually pay for their electricity in such a way that other rate payers in that utility don't have a rate increase, then there will continue to be a growing and successful anti data center revolt. Making the grid more efficient to allow subsidized low cost energy for data centers is backwards. I am not a believer that AI/DC is the savior of the US economy. It is going to be a part of the future for sure. And as David said, and I agree that plentiful inexpensive energy is much more of an advantage to the country than DC's. It encourages manufacturing, more comfortable living, innovation, jobs etc.
Thanks to the comments. I definitely side on they don’t seem clued into what the people are pissed off about. Water use/water pollution , noise, air pollution, few jobs, little to no tax base increase and higher not lower electric rates and potentially power outages to keep the data center online. I mean sure I want that in my community. But if you’re an investment advisor then yes you have to push data centers.
What I havent seen is this mythical data center making electricity cheaper thing. It sounds good but as far as I can tell there isn’t a single example of this happening, even with many thousands of data centers. And if there was one or a few examples shouldn’t they be widely discussed as how to do it right? Both from getting the info out and also for communities to be able to make sure any data centers going in their area are using this design to make sure their rates go down not up.
Re: making electricity cheaper, Jigar Shah's new mantra is "use the grid we've already paid for". In part he's talking about familiar topics like VPPs, GETs, and Demand Flexibility. I suspect a deep dive might get you a concrete plan, somewhere.
I don't think the utilities will cooperate, en masse, anytime soon.
This issue is so funny to me. Walk into any environmental science department in any university in USA and you will find professionals of human dimensions and resource development with stakeholder engagement. Entire courses for undergrads. Cornell University has an entire program for this. Of course, they are in the ecology department so economists and pundits will never know about them. The comments to this piece are revealing. Answers are out there, just in ecology departments, so we suffer whatever this is instead.
The *infinity* energy appetite of AI "data centers" is truly the final death knell for any hope that we're going to somehow stabilize our energy consumption and spare ourselves climate catastrophe. (although crypto was a nice warmup for this situation). If anything that we've been lead to passionately believe about the dire need for conservation, renewables, etc. is actually true, then data centers must be stopped dead in their tracks.
Working in the renewables space for 20+ years, and actually caring about the reasons we need it, renders the data center buildout agonizing to a degree not yet considered.
We are right in the middle of this in Texas. Expecting to hear back today on baseload designation. Abbott forced ERCOT and PUC to pause. He could easily have acheived the exact same result by asking for confirmation that the Batch zero process would do what he believes is necessary. But that wasn't the point, was it? He wanted to send a message. What is the message? Politics always trumps business? Batch zero accomplishes what he wants, btw. He could easily have asked ERCOT to consider adding more community benefits.
As other commentors have noted, the costs and benefits of data centres were not really reviewed in this discussion. It is kind of an important omission. The reality is that your average person sees no benefits. If they trusted local leaders to leverage these centres to the benefit of the community, they would be on-board. The backlash is not ignorance, it's an indictment of tech bros and politicians.