Silicon Valley and Washington sees data centers as the backbone of America’s AI future. Residents who live next to them see giant, humming boxes that throw diesel exhaust into the air, drive up energy costs, and steamroll the look and feel of their neighborhoods—“a plague,” as Virginian anti-data center activist Elena Schlossberg put it.
“If you live near a data center that’s being powered by these gas turbines, you simply cannot imagine living there,” she said. You can “hear the noise” in your home, added Schlossberg—who got into the fight a decade ago while trying, unsuccessfully, to stop Facebook from putting a data center next to her property.
Virginia has long been the biggest data center hub of not just the country but the world, with northern Virginia alone hosting 13% of the globe’s data centers in 2023, according to a government report. And for just as long, residents have been locked into battles over what that footprint means for their communities.
Now, Schlossberg is leading a Virginia nonprofit group, Save Prince William County, to fight against the encroachment of even more data centers to power the AI boom. Data center power demand is expected to rise five-fold over the next decade, Deloitteprojects; reaching 176 gigawatts, the same amount as Australia and the United Kingdom’s entire power grids combined.
