In an onstage speech at an event in Great Falls, Virginia, Microsoft vice president and president Brad Smith directly addressed the growing opposition to data centers across the country, describing it as creating “a moment when we must listen and address these concerns head-on.”
“When I visit communities across the country, people have questions – specific questions. They even have concerns,” Smith said as a slide showed headlines from various news outlets about opposition to data centers. “These are the kinds of questions we need to pay attention to… We’re at a moment when people have a lot on their minds. They’re worried about the price of electricity. They’re wondering what this big data center will mean for their water supply. They’re looking at this technology and asking: What will this mean for jobs in the future? What will this mean for adults today? What will this mean for their children?”
The announcement follows President Donald Trump’s Monday post on Truth Social in which he promised that his administration would work with “major U.S. technology companies,” including Microsoft, to make sure data centers don’t inflate utility bills.
“We are the “Hottest” country in the world and number one for artificial intelligence” – Trump he wrote in a post in which he also accused Democrats of being responsible for rising utility bills. “Data centers are key to this boom and keeping Americans FREE and SAFE, but the big tech companies that build them must pay their way.”
Electricity bills are average grew faster than inflation in recent years in many parts of the country. The price increases are due to a number of factors, including the cost of repairing and maintaining the nation’s aging power grid. But higher demand for electricity – including from data centers that can also be costly to connect to the grid – plays a role. As technology companies and utilities anticipate massive novel energy demand as a result of nationwide data center construction, the Energy Information Administration projects that electricity bills will continue to rise until 2026.
Concerns about data centers and electricity bills played a key role in several local and state midterm elections last year, and research released last fall shows that local opposition to data centers surged in the second quarter of 2025, leading to billions of dollars in projects being put on hold or canceled. The political divide over data centers appears to be bipartisan. In recent months, influential former Trump strategist Steve Bannon has begun speaking out against it energy and water costs in data centers on his War room a podcast that is part of a larger pushback from some MAGA leaders against the development of artificial intelligence in the US.
In turn, the Trump administration has made accelerating the construction of a data center in the US a key priority. Removed various environmental safeguards in data centers, including water safeguards, accelerated review of chemicals associated with their exploit and encouraged development on federal lands. The Department of Energy did this as well instructed Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which oversees interstate transmission, to work on a range of data center and network issues.
Microsoft, which has about 100 data centers planned or under construction across the country, has faced local opposition to some of its projects. In October, the company canceled plans for a data center in Wisconsin due to local opposition; group leading the charge against this project warned a potential “interest rate increase of 5 to 15 percent to subsidize cheap energy.” Last week, the company revealed that it is also behind a proposed project in Michigan, i.e stop in December following concerns from community members. Hundreds of inhabitants took part in the meeting of the spatial planning commission for the project on Monday evening, and many people told local media they came to express their opposition.