Small Town Takes on Tech Giants

Quest for power to feed AI brings fossil fuels, pollution.

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Tomson, mayor of a tiny town tucked away in an idyllic corner of the eastern United States, points to a spot on a map of his region. "The power plant would be there," says the former military man, who is fighting against construction of the mysterious project on the outskirts of Davis, designed to power a vast data centre.

Tomson, whose town is about a three-hour drive from Washington and is home to 600 people, says the plant is being "crammed down our throats" by the state government.

This fight in the woods of rural West Virginia is the latest example of the war between the US tech sector and its rapidly rising need for energy to power the AI boom and the communities it affects.

In a scramble to quickly bring more data centres online, US cloud computing giants are now getting directly involved in energy production.

And while they are using some renewable energy options and trying to revive nuclear power, they are also turning to fossil fuels like gas, which in the United States is relatively cheap.

In neighbouring Pennsylvania, a former coal plant will now run on gas to power a data centre.