Governments seeking to attract artificial intelligence investment are facing growing opposition to data centers over their use of land, electricity and water, prompting protests, lawsuits and tighter rules.
The facilities house thousands of specialized chips and can require as much electricity as a city. Epoch AI estimates that Meta’s Prometheus cluster in Ohio has 631 megawatts of IT power capacity, comparable to the electricity used by about half a million U.S. homes.
Cooling the equipment also requires water. Data centers accounted for an estimated 0.3 percent of the public water supply in the contiguous United States in 2023, according to IEEE Spectrum. The national share is relatively small, but the effect can be far greater in areas already facing water shortages.
Opposition has expanded beyond local planning disputes. Conservative U.S. campaign group Humans First called for demonstrations across the country on July 18 against the rapid construction of data centers.
The NAACP filed a lawsuit in April accusing Elon Musk’s xAI of operating unpermitted gas turbines to supply its Colossus 2 facility near Memphis. The civil rights group alleges that pollution from the turbines is affecting nearby, predominantly Black communities. The company is contesting the case.
Similar disputes have reached courts elsewhere. Environmental groups in Spain’s Aragón region have challenged an Amazon Web Services expansion, citing its water and electricity requirements and the planning process used to approve it.
Residents in Inzai, a data center hub near Tokyo, have also taken legal action against a proposed facility close to residential areas.
Governments are responding in different ways. New York this week became the first U.S. state to impose a statewide moratorium on new hyperscale data centers, pausing state environmental permits for projects above 50 megawatts for up to one year.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced plans for legislation requiring large data centers to underwrite or supply new power generation and minimize their water use.
Maine Gov. Janet Mills, however, vetoed a proposed moratorium in April because it did not exempt a locally supported project at a former paper mill.
Amsterdam has restricted new data center construction over space and electricity constraints, while Denmark has announced plans to place new data center connections at the bottom of its priority list for access to the strained power grid.
