If there’s one thing Republicans and Democrats are united on in 2025 – at least at the local level – it’s pausing immense, energy-intensive data center projects.
For communities tired of rising electricity bills and pollution caused by power plants, data centers have become an obvious target. Fights against recent data centers have intensified this year as community groups, voters and local lawmakers demanded more accountability from developers. They have already managed to block or halt potential investments worth tens of billions of dollars in proposed data centers. And they don’t give up.
“We expect the backlash will continue to grow,” says Miquel Vila, an analyst at research firm Data Center Watch, who has been tracking anti-data center campaigns across the United States since 2023.
“We expect opposition to continue to grow.”
The latest version of the group report showed that developers canceled or delayed 20 projects after resident opposition, accounting for $98 billion proposed in the second quarter of this year. In fact, from slow March through June, $24.2 billion worth of projects were blocked and $73.7 billion in delays. This is an enhance from 16 blocked or postponed projects from 2023 to the first quarter of this year, the group notes.
The number of proposed data center projects has increased, which is the main reason why the opposition is also gaining momentum. Inventory in the four largest data center markets in North America – Northern Virginia, Chicago, Atlanta and Phoenix – increased 43 percent year-over-year in the first quarter of this year, – says CBRE, a commercial real estate company. But there are also plans to build recent, huge facilities battles By nation.
Data centers consume a lot of electricity, especially with the more powerful chips used in recent AI models. Energy demand for data centers is expected to enhance By the end of the year, 22 percent compared to last year. A high-density server rack in an AI data center can consume 80 to 100 homes, or more than 100 kilowatts, by Dan ThompsonChief Research Analyst at S&P Global. AI too requires a lot of water to nippy servers and generate electricity, and could apply as much indoor energy annually as 18.5 million American households by 2028 by one estimate.
Google abandoned plans for a new data center in Franklin Township, Indiana in September after residents expressed concerns about the amount of water and electricity used by the new data center. The Indianapolis City-County Council reportedly rejected the rezoning request. This victory for Indiana residents was not included in the Data Center Watch report, which is only updated through June.
Other data center projects that are progressing or already operational continue to face resistance. For example, Elon Musk’s xAI there is a potential lawsuit from the NAACP and the Southern Environmental Law Center over contamination from a Memphis data center. Peak nitrogen dioxide concentrations in the area surrounding the data center have increased by 79 percent since it began in 2024, the data shows. research commissioned by the University of Tennessee in Knoxville Time warehouse.
xAI that builds a second, larger data center in Memphis did not immediately respond to a request for comment Edgebut states: “We are moving towards a future where we use the full power of our cluster to solve unsolvable problems” – on his website.
“No community should be forced to sacrifice clean air, clean water, or safe homes so that corporations and billionaires can build energy-intensive facilities,” the NAACP said in guiding principles with whom he shared Edge in September for other grassroots groups working to hold data center developers accountable for their impact on nearby neighborhoods.
The finish line is in front of A reaction compared to the largest-ever data center planned for Richland Parish, Louisiana. Local Entergy utility broke this month in two of the three gas power plants under construction, it is to meet the facility’s expected demand for electricity three times the amount of energy New Orleans uses in a year. “Enterrgy LA customers are now willing to subsidize Meta data center costs,” the Union of Concerned Scientists says in a statement November blog postincluding an estimated $3.2 billion for three gas-fired power plants and a recent $550 million transmission line. Entergy, on the other hand, claims that “Meta’s electricity payments to Entergy will reduce the amount customers pay for resiliency improvements by approximately 10%,” according to communications manager Brandon Scardigli.
“Our agreement with Entergy is structured to ensure that other customers will not pay for our data center energy use,” says Meta spokeswoman Ashley Settle in an email to Edge. Settle adds that Meta is contributing $15 million to Entergy’s ratepayer assistance program and more than $200 million to improve local infrastructure.
“Now we have a bogeyman.”
“Now we have the bogeyman — data centers, which are large energy consumers coming in, and many states are getting great deals on wholesale electricity prices, while regular consumers have no such influence,” said Tony Reames, a professor of environmental justice at the University of Michigan and a former Energy Department official under President Biden. Edge after the elections.
States, both red and blue, are starting to set some limits on these sweetheart deals. After South Dakota lawmakers rejected a bill that would have given developers a sales tax refund, Applied Digital has put on hold plans to build a $16 billion AI campus able. Virginia, Maryland, AND Minnesotameanwhile, they have introduced regulations to limit tax incentives for data centers or energy costs for other consumers, according to a report by Data Center Watch.
Nationally, over 230 health and environmental groups called for a moratorium on the construction of data centers. The organizations, led by the nonprofit Food & Water Watch, sent: letter to Congress with its demands in December. They argue that sufficient policies have not been implemented to prevent data centers from burdening nearby communities with higher bills and more pollution. President Donald Trump published “AI roadmap” in July, which aims to accelerate data center development, in part by rolling back environmental regulations.
Vila expects we’ll likely see more data center fights impacting local politics with the midterm elections next year. “It will be very interesting to track how this opposition impacts the regulatory framework,” he says.