NIMBYs are coming for the data centres AI needs

The emerging political battle over data centres has a feature unfamiliar to present-day policymaking: The opponents are not divided along partisan lines. Instead, the conflict is between local communities and Big Tech developers, with elected officials caught in the middle.

- Mary Ellen Klas, Tribune News Service

Politicians — from both parties — who have greenlit these projects without enough guardrails have found their careers finished. Officials who once courted data centers for their economic potential are facing pushback from residents and businesses who've been blindsided by the strain on the power grid and water supply, the impact of noise pollution and the potential damage to property values.

Virginia pioneered a sales-and-use tax exemption for data center equipment in 2008. Since then, dozens of states have offered similar financial incentives to lure the tech industry’s power centers, primarily because they create construction jobs and provide a windfall of tax revenue. But these mammoth facilities consume monstrous amounts of energy and water — something that threatens to drive up electricity prices to political liability levels. Now Virginia serves as a cautionary tale of what not to do. Its 600 data centers use as much electricity as two million households, or more than half the households in the state. It is also a lax land-use state with no regulations requiring local governments to show they have adequate services before they permit new data center construction. Local officials are left to develop their own ordinances and codes.