Over 230 groups demand moratorium on AI data center expansion as communities revolt nationwide

Activist groups urge Congress to pause datacenter buildouts

More than 230 organizations across America have signed a letter calling for a moratorium on the construction of datacenters, claiming the current building boom represents a huge environmental and social threat. The open letter [PDF], sent to members of the US Congress by campaign group Food & Water Watch, complains that the AI-driven wave of datacenter expansion is stoking demand for more energy, which in turn leads to further greenhouse gas emissions, straining water resources, and higher electricity prices for ordinary consumers across the country. Organizations endorsing the letter collectively represent millions of citizens across all 50 US states, the group claims. It urges members of Congress to suspend the construction of new facilities until adequate regulations are enacted to protect communities and the environment from the damage it claims is already being inflicted. Investment in datacenters has hit an all-time high, thanks mostly to the burgeoning requirements of training and serving AI. Analyst firm Omdia estimates global datacenter capex will top $657 billion by the end of 2025, almost double the figure of just two years ago, with the US dominating this spending. In hotspots such as Virginia, hyperscale datacenter capacity is greater than the entire capacity of China or the whole of Europe, according to previous figures. This comes at a cost, as those facilities consumed nearly twice as much power in the second half of 2024 compared to the prior six months. Overall, datacenters' water consumption increased by almost two-thirds over the past five years. Ordinary Americans will likely pay for all this extra power generating capacity and the grid infrastructure needed to carry it, with a report out last year warning that US consumers could face a 70 percent hike in their electricity bills by 2030. In addition, it emerged last month that some states are keeping citizens in the dark about the subsidies they use to attract datacenter companies to their territory, which means many projects are being funded at the expense of taxpayers. Even worse, all these new datacenters are causing greater greenhouse gas emissions, with hyperscale operators such as Microsoft and Google admitting their emissions have risen over the past several years, in spite of their commitments to reach net-zero by the end of the decade. The demand for power has spurred a resurgence in coal-fired power generation, one of the dirtiest, most polluting ways of producing electricity. And datacenters generating their own energy on-site are also contributing to the problem, as demonstrated by the Colossus facility run by Elon Musk's xAI, which was accused of being one of the largest sources of smog-generating nitrogen oxides (NOx) in the Memphis area thanks to its fleet of gas turbines. "At a time when millions of Americans are already struggling with soaring utility costs, the sudden explosion of the Big Data industry represents an existential threat for communities ill-equipped to handle the massive environmental and economic hardships these datacenters inflict," stated Food & Water Watch executive director Wenonah Hauter. "The only prudent action is to halt the unfettered expansion of this dangerous industry in order to properly examine all manner of potential harm before it's too late," she added. Good luck with that. As far as the Trump administration is concerned, the US is in a race with China for AI supremacy, and it can only win by investing more in compute muscle to underpin AI development. US Interior Secretary Doug Burgum went as far to claim that: "The real existential threat right now is not a degree of climate change. It's the fact that we could lose the [AI] arms race if we don't have enough power." Trump himself pledged to remove obstacles to connecting datacenters to the electricity grid at the federal level during a White House dinner held for tech industry oligarchs in September. And AI investment is the only thing keeping the America out of a recession right now, as economists disclosed in October. The datacenter industry is aware that it isn't entirely loved, as was revealed at an industry event in June. A Microsoft exec complained there are "communities that don't want us there.". The consensus was not that the industry needs to change, more that the public should be better informed about what datacenters actually do and the applications and industries which depend upon them. The industry should get people to think of bit barns as vital utilities, like water and electricity. ®

A grassroots NIMBY revolt is turning voters in Republican strongholds against the AI data-center boom | Fortune

"If you live near a data center that's being powered by these gas turbines, you simply cannot imagine living there," she said. You can "hear the noise" in your home, added Schlossberg -- who got into the fight a decade ago while trying, unsuccessfully, to stop Facebook from putting a data center next to her property. Virginia has long been the biggest data center hub of not just the country but the world, with northern Virginia alone hosting 13% of the globe's data centers in 2023, according to a government report. And for just as long, residents have been locked into battles over what that footprint means for their communities. Now, Schlossberg is leading a Virginia nonprofit group, Save Prince William County, to fight against the encroachment of even more data centers to power the AI boom. Data center power demand is expected to rise five-fold over the next decade, Deloitteprojects; reaching 176 gigawatts, the same amount as Australia and the United Kingdom's entire power grids combined. AI infrastructure builders, and the tech giants that plan to rely on the future data centers, argue that they're essential to unlocking AI's economic benefits. But in some of the states slated to house these projects, many of them politically purple-ish or even red -- Virginia, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania -- voters are revolting, often successfully keeping them out of their neighborhoods. Indeed, in elections held last month, opposition to data centers helped tip elections in Democrats' favor in Virginia and Republican-leaning Georgia. "Folks realize they're getting duped," said Kerwin Olson, executive director of the Citizens Action Coalition, an environmental advocacy coalition based in Indiana. "It's not just something they hear on Fox News or MSNBC anymore. It's happening in their own backyard." Big Tech companies, Olson added, are showing up at local planning commissions and drainage boards asking for "huge giveaways" -- tax abatements, zoning variances, special exceptions -- "all to build a $3 billion box that creates maybe 30 jobs." "So they're like, what's in it for us?" Olson asked. The first signs of what could be a broader political reckoning are appearing at the county level. In Prince William County -- home to the fight over a proposed 2,000-acre "Digital Gateway" development near the Manassas battlefield -- data centers have already forced recalls, resignations, and primary defeats of elected officials, Schlossberg said. The issue has become so radioactive that candidates in both parties now treat opposition to data-center expansion as a prerequisite for running, she added. "It's never been red versus blue," Schlossberg said. "It's people who live here versus people who want to industrialize where we live." That county could be a canary in the coalmine for what comes next, as Democrats and Republicans approach critical midterm congressional elections in 2026. Across key swing states, activists say the next wave of AI-driven projects will collide with a public that is far more organized and hostile than it was even two years ago. That tension is beginning to creep into politics. In Indiana, legislators publicly tout the state's new data-center incentives while privately warning counties that the projects are not without tradeoffs. In Virginia, candidates now get asked -- at libraries, at farmer's markets, even at high school football games -- whether they would support a temporary moratorium. Olson said his group has been "buried" in calls from Hoosiers in every corner of the state -- red, blue, rural, suburban -- asking for help deciphering tax abatements and utility filings. "I've worked on energy issues for decades," he said. "I have never seen anything like the scale of anger over this." When voters see those consequences firsthand, Olson said, they stop caring about geopolitical talking points. "You can tell people this is about beating China," he said. But when their bill goes up, and their kids are sleeping in basements with headphones on because of the noise, they're not thinking about China. At the heart of the backlash is a basic economic question that data-center backers haven't convincingly answered: Why should the public subsidize infrastructure that serves some of the world's richest companies? Indiana's first filing under its new "80/20" law -- touted as a safeguard to make data centers pay most of the costs -- still leaves ratepayers actually footing nearly 40% of the bill, Olson said. The organization he runs, Citizens Action Coalition, did an analysis that revealed that Hoosier households paid 17.5% more in utility bills in 2025 than the previous year. In Virginia, residents fear they will ultimately finance the transmission lines and new generation needed to serve hyperscale facilities. "The public utility model was always a social contract," Schlossberg said. "The data-center industry blew that up." In many ways, the backlash boils down to a trust problem. Residents don't trust Big Tech, seeing the hyperscalers as being like "robber barons at the turn of the century" but with unprecedented demands for land, water, and power. Olson pointed to NDAs, closed-door negotiations, and local officials dining with tech consultants as signs that decisions are being made over communities' heads and without local voters' input. Layered onto that is a broader skepticism of AI itself: Many voters aren't convinced they should remake their towns for what still feels like an unproven or overhyped technology. "It's like the Gilded Age, part two," Olson said. "Only bigger."

Environmental groups call for national moratorium on AI data centers

More than 230 environmental organizations, including Food & Water Watch, Friends of the Earth, and Greenpeace, last week urged members of Congress to support a national moratorium on the approval and construction of new data centers. The groups have cited rising electricity and water consumption as energy demand for data centers has soared. Consumers have also expressed concerns regarding utility bills. The letter to Congress stated, "The rapid, largely unregulated rise of data centers to fuel the AI and crypto frenzy is disrupting communities across the country and threatening Americans' economic, environmental, climate and water security." Studies have linked higher energy prices to the establishment of new data centers in a region. A recent survey, commissioned by solar installer Sunrun, found that 80% of consumers worried about data centers negatively affecting their utility bills. Electricity prices have already increased 13% this year in the US, marking the largest annual rise in the past decade. The impact is expected to be most significant in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, and New Jersey, which are slated for the largest increases in data center capacity. Energy demand for data centers is projected to nearly triple in the coming decade, from 40 gigawatts today to 106 gigawatts by 2035, with much of this growth occurring in rural areas. "All this compounds the significant and concerning impacts AI is having on society, including lost jobs, social instability and economic concentration," the environmental groups said. Proposed data centers recently became points of contention. Last week, protestors demonstrated outside the headquarters of utility DTE in Detroit. The company is seeking approval from the Michigan Public Service Commission to supply OpenAI and Oracle with electricity for a 1.4 gigawatt data center. Protestors cited concerns about increased electricity bills, excessive fresh water usage, and traffic congestion. Also last week, authorities arrested three individuals in Wisconsin during a common council meeting regarding a 902 megawatt data center planned as part of OpenAI and Oracle's Stargate project.