The backlash about data centers might really just be about electricity
It’s accepted wisdom in Big Tech that the war against data centers must be about something bigger than just data centers themselves.
Key points
- In Virginia’s Loudoun County, where data centers are ubiquitous but have been built at a steadier pace than the breakneck expansion now underway elsewhere in the country, most are connected to the existing grid.
- Schlossberg also worries about the downstream effects of a strained grid—for example, that data centers will run more diesel generators or that Dominion Energy will expand fossil fuel inputs rather than renewables to meet demand.
- It’s a lot of power for one industrial site, but not unprecedented: One data center developer told me he’s eyeing a former steel mill already equipped to draw that much electricity from the grid.
I came away convinced that the data center backlash is more about electricity than Big Tech admits.
Two days after the midterms, OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer, Chris Lehane, wrote that data centers “have become a proxy for public unease about affordability, corporate power, and people losing control over their futures.” It’s a culture war, in other words.
Additional details
- Recent protests have led to new rules from the state that data centers must pay fully for the cost of new transmission lines to the grid and make sure they’re not spread among everyone else.
- Elena Schlossberg, a prominent activist against data centers in Virginia, told me she’s “always banging my head against the wall” when the industry paints the fight as a culture war.
- The notion of data center companies’ bringing their own power might seem attractive at first, because they wouldn’t be straining the grid.
- There are two ways to power the sort of data center that AI companies want: connecting to the grid, or generating electricity onsite.
- But spending a few days in Data Center Alley left me wondering if it’s really the proxy that Lehane describes.
How this summary was made: extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting. It is drawn only from the reporting of the sources listed below — read the originals for full detail. How we summarize →
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