Data center battles marking politics worldwide
Governments seeking to attract artificial intelligence investment are facing growing opposition to data centers over their use of land, electricity and water, prompting protests, lawsuits and tighter rules.
The facilities house thousands of specialized chips and can require as much electricity as a city. Epoch AI estimates that Meta’s Prometheus cluster in Ohio has 631 megawatts of IT power capacity, comparable to the electricity used by about half a million U.S. homes.
Cooling the equipment also requires water. Data centers accounted for an estimated 0.3 percent of the public water supply in the contiguous United States in 2023, according to IEEE Spectrum. The national share is relatively small, but the effect can be far greater in areas already facing water shortages.
Opposition has expanded beyond local planning disputes. Conservative U.S. campaign group Humans First called for demonstrations across the country on July 18 against the rapid construction of data centers.
