The hidden cost of AI: Why your town is negotiating with Amazon and Microsoft

The future of data centers isn’t being decided in Silicon Valley boardrooms or Washington backrooms. It’s being shaped on Main Street, in town councils and utility commissions across America. What’s emerging is a new “community contract” that delivers for both sides – joining the data center boom with key local investments and benefits.

That contract is the foundation for the largest infrastructure buildout in a generation. As Fortune recently covered, PJM’s independent market monitor recently tied the expected demand from data centers to roughly $23 billion in higher electricity costs for customers across the mid-Atlantic and Midwest, running through at least 2028. It is the hardest question the industry has faced in decades: how to meet the massive energy demand of new data centers, while keeping the lights on and bills affordable.

So far, this AI-driven buildout has been painted as us vs. them, residents vs. data centers, utility customers vs. Big Tech. I’m convinced that isn’t the right story.

The more interesting, and important, conversations are happening far from those fights, in places like Hobart, Indiana.

Hobart is a town of about 30,000, the kind of place where the big civic fights are usually about zoning and the local high school. The town found itself across the........

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