Data center backlash is about electricity, not only Big Tech

Rebecca Stone

The average data center operating in Loudoun County, Virginia, has a 54-megawatt power capacity, more than the power draw of Denver International Airport.

As voters went to the polls across the United States during election week, I visited Ashburn, Virginia, where concrete, monolithic buildings loom over major roads under names including Skybox and CloudHQ. Ashburn forms part of Data Center Alley, which I described as the world’s largest data center hub. I found the clearest early form of the national backlash there.

Those load figures turn a dispute over AI culture into an electricity fight. Grid capacity, transmission costs and local consent now shape where AI infrastructure can go and who pays for it.

What is the culture-war argument?

Big Tech’s accepted wisdom holds that the fight over data centers must concern something larger than the facilities themselves. Two days after the midterms, OpenAI 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.”

Lehane’s framing treats opposition as a culture war. My reporting points to a more immediate constraint: the enormous electricity appetite of AI infrastructure and the burden it places on utilities and nearby communities. Improving the industry’s image will not remove that physical effect.

How does Virginia power its data centers?

There are two ways to power an AI-scale data center: connect to the grid or generate electricity onsite. In Loudoun County, where data centers are ubiquitous but have grown at a steadier pace than the breakneck expansion elsewhere, most connect to the existing grid.

I visited an Equinix facility with massive diesel generators for backup. It draws power from the local utility, Dominion Energy, which generates much of its electricity with natural gas. Natural gas is cleaner than coal or oil, but worse than renewables.

The average capacity in this part of Virginia is 54 megawatts, already more than Denver International Airport’s draw. That scale turns an abstract cultural dispute into a local infrastructure dispute.

Elena Schlossberg, a prominent Virginia activist against data centers, said she is “always banging my head against the wall” when the industry portrays the fight as a culture war. “It was always about power,” she said, meaning electricity.

Some Virginia protesters draw more energy from anti-tech populism, including fears about jobs and concentrated corporate power. Yet the effects of pulling so much electricity from a shared grid have done more to shape the backlash.

What do Virginia’s new rules require?

Recent protests have produced new Virginia rules requiring data centers to pay the full cost of new transmission lines and prevent those costs from being spread across other ratepayers. Developers told me they are preparing for additional rules that would cut them off from grid power during peak demand.

Schlossberg also warned that a strained grid could force data centers to run more diesel generators. Dominion Energy could meet new demand by expanding fossil-fuel generation instead of renewables, she said. The rules therefore shift the debate from opposition in principle to the cost and timing of the electricity supply.

Why are new AI campuses bringing their own power?

The overwhelming majority of AI data centers being built elsewhere in the United States are not designed around the existing grid. Their desired scale has pushed developers into rural areas with little or no grid infrastructure. These “behind the meter” projects bring their own natural-gas turbines and also build diesel generators for backup.

Bloomberg reported that Anthropic had agreed to pay $3.4 billion for gas turbines in the largest power-generation purchase by an AI company. Even where a grid is nearby, it is unlikely to supply the required load. The smallest data centers attractive for AI training are 300 megawatts.

One developer told me he was considering a former steel mill already equipped to draw that much electricity. The ideal facilities are closer to 6,000 megawatts, the estimated power draw of Chicago. Chicago has more than 20 power plants within city limits and dozens more farther out.

Can private power plants avoid community backlash?

Bringing onsite generation appears to spare utilities from serving the load, but it does not spare surrounding communities. Natural-gas turbines of any scale release air pollutants, and diesel generators are worse. Utilities building infrastructure at this scale have traditionally faced community demands for a say in its location; private companies now undertake comparable projects.

The Environmental Protection Agency said Elon Musk violated air-quality laws when he set up dozens of turbines to power a data center in Memphis. The episode shows how the rush to open AI facilities can make companies poor neighbors even when they avoid the grid.

Protests are also pushing companies toward community deals that raise tax revenue, hire local workers and increase local involvement. Those terms help, but they cannot fully resolve the burden of living beside a small city of computers.

A town asked to accommodate Walt Disney World, an international airport, a steel plant and the power plants needed to run them would have reason for concern.

What else is driving the opposition?

Electricity is not the only concern. Fears of job losses, existential risks and concentrated corporate power also fuel protests, and misinformation adds to the problem. One common claim overstates how much water data centers use; most facilities consume far less water than many people believe.

Large electricity consumption is not inherently bad, either. Many advances that improved modern life required substantial power. But a developer recently told me that industry ambitions face a tighter constraint than public opposition: a shortage of electricity. That reverses the usual political framing and puts grid access ahead of community sentiment on the industry’s own priority list.

Where do the data centers go next?

Newly elected politicians may moderate the hostile positions they took on data centers during their campaigns. The physical logic of onsite generation is likely to persist. Projects that rely on onsite power will move toward places with the fewest residents able to resist them, along with the fuel and connections needed to supply large loads.

The Permian Basin fits that description because its natural-gas lines offer straightforward connections and its population is sparse. Companies may also build abroad. Google announced on the day after the elections that it will spend $15 billion on data center projects in Malaysia.

Hours after the midterms results came in, Elon Musk posted: “Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now.” The remark captured the constraint facing the next AI buildout: computing demand may be global and politically contentious, but its power supply is local, physical and finite.