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Data Centers

Wisconsin City Passes Nation’s First Anti-Data Center Referendum

April 10, 2026 Tyler Katzenberger, Portside. , , , ,
A small Wisconsin city home to a data center project backed by President Donald Trump voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to restrict future data centers, in a first-of-its-kind referendum that backers said could offer a blueprint for AI infrastructure opponents around the country. Voters in the Milwaukee suburb of Port Washington approved the measure by a roughly 2-to-1 margin, according to unofficial results. City residents who sponsored the voter initiative said it marks an escalation of tactics to oppose the massive facilities needed to power artificial intelligence and could inspire activists in other towns to follow suit.

How Data Center Developers Staked Their Claim In Rural Georgia

April 8, 2026 Edward Donnelly, DeSmog. , , ,
Jacqueline Lassetter wanted to see America’s biggest data center. So one day in July last year, at the age of 78, she jumped into a car with her daughter, Daphne, and headed west across the muddy Chattahoochee River, leaving their wooded Georgia home for the Nevada desert. A week later, she was standing in front of the Citadel Campus, owned by data center company Switch, which lies along a stretch of highway outside of Reno, Nevada more than 2,000 miles from her home. Lassetter was finally able to imagine what might soon be coming to her doorstep in Coweta County, Georgia: a gigantic, windowless computing complex emitting a strange hum.

Big Green + Big Tech = Bigger Environmental Racism

March 27, 2026 Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
As David Holt, Mayor of Oklahoma City, remarked to Politico last month, “ If you had asked me about data centers five months ago, I would have said: ‘What’s a data center?” He continued, “Now it’s everywhere. So that’s a short amount of time to fully formulate what you think about it.” While it’s true that data centers to power artificial intelligence (AI) are a ubiquitous aspect of the current U.S. lexicon, the idea that positions on data centers have not been fully formulated is questionable. Clearly, Big Tech corporations are solid in their position that they need as much influence over the government and other decision makers to proliferate their data center infrastructure wherever they want and as quickly as they want.

AI Data Centers Spark Debate On Native Lands

March 20, 2026 Jen Deerinwater and Jesse Deer In Water, Counter Punch. , , , ,
The recent explosion in artificial intelligence (AI) data centers has created a litany of environmental and cultural issues for Native people and Tribes across the so-called “United States.” This, in turn, has sparked intense debate and prompted conversations on tribal digital sovereignty and a call for regulation that controls the data, infrastructure, and networks. Data centers are facilities that keep and manage internet technology infrastructure for processing, storing, and distributing large quantities of data. They are key to modern digital services, which can include AI.

Residents Victorious In Fight To Stop Pekin, Illinois Data Center

March 15, 2026 Nicholis Hall, People's World. , ,
Pekin, IL — Residents celebrated a victory Tuesday night as Mayor Mary Burress announced that Pekin City Council does not plan to move forward with approval for a proposed AI data center. Burress was greeted with applause by those in attendance as she read off her statement indicating the council was nixing the facility. “When a project creates this level of uncertainty and division, it is important for us to step back to consider whether moving forward is truly the right path,” Buress told the crowd. Zoey Carter, who is running for the Illinois State House in District 93, expressed gratitude for the decision, highlighting the various reasons the community opposed the data center.

Data Centers Are Poised To Engulf A Pennsylvania Town

March 15, 2026 Edward Donnelly, DeSmog. , , ,
On a chilly Monday just before Thanksgiving, residents of Archbald, Pennsylvania hurried from work in the fading autumn light to snag seats in the old brick Borough Building for a 5 p.m. council meeting. After the roughly 50 seats quickly filled, people continued to pack the room, standing along the walls or wedging themselves into the remaining floor space. Police officers manned the doors. Outside, latecomers huddled around a laptop in the 40-degree cold to watch proceedings on a hastily rigged livestream. On the sidewalk, someone waved a handmade sign saying “Boycott AI.”

New Jersey Residents Defeat AI Data Center

February 20, 2026 Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams. , , ,
The New Brunswick, New Jersey City Council voted Wednesday to cancel plans to construct an artificial intelligence data center and instead build a new public park where the 27,000-square foot facility would have gone. Artificial intelligence data centers—which house the servers and other infrastructure needed to train and power AI models—have major environmental and climate impacts, as they consume massive amounts of electricity and water, as well as rare earth metals and other resources. According to New Brunswick Patch, hundreds of people packed into Wednesday evening’s city hall meeting to voice concerns that the proposed data center would send their electricity and water bills skyrocketing, and that the facility would harm the environment.

Big Tech Accused Of AI ‘Greenwashing’

February 17, 2026 Joey Grostern, DeSmog. , , , ,
The big tech industry’s claims about the climate benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) are largely unproven and unsubstantiated, according to a new report from a coalition of climate advocacy and accountability groups. The report found that only 26 percent of the climate claims made by big tech companies cited published academic research, with 36 percent citing no evidence whatsoever. The analysis is the first of its kind to assess climate claims from major AI developers like Google and Microsoft, as well as from independent institutions like the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Grassroots Organizers Offer Blueprint For Beating Back Data Centers

February 15, 2026 Derek Seidman, Truthout. , , ,
Data centers are big business. Around 3,000 new data centers — huge buildings that house the computing power that props up the growing use of artificial intelligence (AI) — are currently being built or planned across the U.S. Some speculate that global spending on data centers could hit $3 trillion by 2029. Corporate interests — from energy firms and construction companies, to real estate businesses and utilities — are looking to cash in. But private equity — that powerful and opaque slice of Wall Street, run by mega-billionaire founders, focused on private investment and outsized profits — is an especially outsized force driving the data center boom, pouring billions into construction deals while also positioning itself to profit from supplying AI’s insatiable energy demands.

Data Center Boom, Corporate Extraction, And The Obfuscation Of The Land Question

January 31, 2026 Austin Cole, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
The years 2024 and 2025 saw a massive upswing in the number of data centers planned and constructed in the United States and globally as part of the race to develop computing infrastructure for “Artificial Intelligence” technologies. 2025 also witnessed a massive increase in protests, lawsuits, and movements against data center construction throughout the U.S., with at least 25 data center projects cancelled across the United States (four times the number in 2024) in 2025, and up to 25 more canceled in the first three weeks of 2026.

After A White Town Rejected A Data Center, Developers Targeted Black Area

January 14, 2026 Adam Mahoney, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
In December, on a two-lane road not far from the ACE Basin, a protected ecosystem and wildlife refuge in South Carolina, Paul Black drove past St. Paul AME Church and the cemetery where his wife’s grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-grandmother are buried, then slowed as the trees opened onto the piney tract. ​Black is an environmental activist who has spent years fighting polluting projects across the South. But now he and Black residents in the rural South Carolina community are bracing for a new fight: to stop a proposed data center complex the size of 1,200 football fields.

As Electricity Bills Rise, Activists Demand Public Control Of Utilities

January 5, 2026 Derek Seidman, Truthout. , , ,
Electricity bills for millions of utility customers are skyrocketing across the U.S. while the number of households facing extreme utility debt is mounting. Energy costs are being turbocharged by the AI data center boom, which is prolonging the burning of fossil fuels in the face of intensifying climate chaos. Overseeing all this is a powerful regime of investor-owned utilities that dominate our energy system. These for-profit corporations own and control the basic infrastructure we all depend on. Their executives and shareholders profit by raising electric rates or skimping on maintenance. And now, private equity firms are gunning for utilities.

Shreveport City Council Disrupted Over Secretive AI Data Center

January 1, 2026 Fight Back! News. , , ,
Shreveport, LA – On December 18, community members packed a Shreveport city council meeting Thursday afternoon at 3 p.m. to oppose a proposed artificial intelligence data center being introduced through a special use permit. The meeting became a flashpoint for public anger over secrecy, environmental harm and corporate control of local government. City council members met to discuss and vote on the proposal despite having signed non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) that conceal critical details of the project from the public.

The Koch Network Is Pushing Trump To Accelerate AI

December 15, 2025 Geoff Dembicki, DeSmog. , , , , ,
A political group created by oil and gas billionaire Charles Koch earlier this year wrote to a branch of the U.S. government making requests about artificial intelligence. “To seize the moment and ensure that AI can meet its true promise and potential,” it argued in March to the National Coordination Office, a federal body tasked by Donald Trump at the time with developing an AI Action Plan, the administration should “clear the red tape” preventing “energy innovators” from supplying the massive amounts of electricity required to power new AI data centers across the country.

These 15 Coal Plants Would Have Retired; Then Came AI And Trump

December 12, 2025 Joe Fassler, DeSmog. , , , , , ,
Since the second Trump administration took power in January, at least 15 coal plants have had planned retirements pushed back or delayed indefinitely, a DeSmog analysis found. That’s mostly due to an expected rise in electricity demand, a surge largely driven by the rise of high-powered data centers needed to train and run artificial intelligence (AI) models. But some of the plants have been ordered to stay open by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), despite significant environmental and financial costs. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, a former fracking executive, has frequently cited “winning the AI race” as a rationale for re-investing in coal.
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