Science and Technology

Weeks ahead of high-stakes midterm elections, many Americans are revolting against the data centers being developed in their communities to power President Donald Trump’s artificial intelligence ambitions.

About two-thirds of Americans oppose local data center construction, according to polls, and that resistance has been reflected in sweeping protests. In addition to concerns about the impact a new data center may have on jobs, local residents commonly cite the amounts of water, electricity, and land data centers consume and what that could mean for energy bills and the environment.

Weeks ahead of high-stakes midterm elections, many Americans are revolting against the data centers being developed in their communities to power President Donald Trump’s artificial intelligence ambitions.

About two-thirds of Americans oppose local data center construction, according to polls, and that resistance has been reflected in sweeping protests. In addition to concerns about the impact a new data center may have on jobs, local residents commonly cite the amounts of water, electricity, and land data centers consume and what that could mean for energy bills and the environment.

Most controversial are the “hyperscale” data centers used by companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, which can dwarf the size of other facilities and have taken off amid the AI boom.

Opposition has grown so fierce that at least 15 states are weighing moratoriums, while lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have aligned themselves with outraged locals. “We’ve finally found something that can unite the left and the right,” quipped Joshua Rhodes, a research scientist at the University of Texas at Austin.

Yet that backlash has done little to deter the Trump administration, which has championed data centers in its bid for global AI dominance. More than 1,500 data centers are now under development, adding to the 3,000 already operating in the country, according to the Pew Research Center.

“The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor,” Trump declared in a post on Truth Social in August. “If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign.”

As tensions threaten to reach a fever pitch ahead of midterms, here’s what we know about data centers’ actual resource footprint.

At a time of surging energy costs, national attention has focused on data centers’ power consumption, with half of Americans saying that they spell trouble for energy bills, according to Pew.

Data centers accounted for 4.7 percent of total U.S. electricity consumption in 2024, up from 4.4 percent the year before, according to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

That share is set to surge in the coming years, though estimates range. Data centers could consume nearly 12 percent of U.S. electricity by 2030, according to Lawrence Berkeley. And by 2035, data centers could suck up so much energy that they make up about one-fifth of U.S. electricity consumption, according to BloombergNEF.

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