As a senior writer covering climate and energy for WIRED, it feels like almost all anyone wants to talk to me about these days is data centers. There’s more than enough aspects of that topic to keep an environment and tech journalist busy—especially when it comes to the centers’ prodigious energy and water needs.
I’ve been struck recently by the growing intensity of local opposition—and how hatred of data centers is crossing cultural, political, and generational lines. As the AI revolution races on and companies pour billions into their buildouts, public opposition to data center development is increasingly the face of resistance to the technology itself. What began a few years ago as standard complaints about noise and zoning has blossomed into legitimate concerns about high electricity bills, water scarcity, tax breaks for Big Tech—and the question of whether we need data centers at all.
Amid my reporting on xAI’s presence in Memphis, where Elon Musk’s company installed unpermitted gas turbines in a majority-Black neighborhood, our TikTok showing visuals of the pollution went viral. This past summer, as I dug into an AI moratorium—the blueprint for a new executive order expected in the next few days—that was proposed and ultimately rejected by Republicans lawmakers as they crafted the so-called Big Beautiful Bill, I was surprised to see Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) expressing concerns over how such a moratorium might stomp on local zoning rules.
My latest piece covers a new report from Data Center Watch, a group run by the AI intelligence firm 10a Labs, showing that bipartisan opposition to data centers seems to have exploded in the second quarter of 2025. The report came just a week after Election Day, when data center disputes loomed large in races in states like Virginia and Georgia, both of which have seen extreme tech buildouts. I spoke to two state officials, one of whom says his “coalition of data center reform-minded legislators has just grown to a very large number.”
If there’s a data center proposed for your town, I’d love to hear from you. Feel free to reach out by email or Signal.
—Molly Taft
