Data Centers Are Spooking Americans

Recently, it seemed that the first-ever state ban on hyperscale data centers might become reality. Maine's 18-month moratorium had moved through both legislative chambers, but was scuttled by the governor's veto. Maine Governor Mills said she would have signed it if it included an exemption for the data center in the former Androscoggin Mill site in the town of Jay, which the town had already approved. After the mill closed in 2023 from an accident, the town had trouble repurposing it, but a data center provider had been signed on, and had the bill passed this deal would fall through.

Elsewhere in the United States, AI data centers have replaced long vacant industrial and retail spaces. After Sears filed for bankruptcy, their headquarters in Illinois was bought up by Compass and will now become a 200 MW data center campus. In Kentucky and Maryland, idled aluminium smelters are being repurposed into data centers.

Despite the promise of this second industrialization, the broader American public is skeptical of AI data centers.. Over 50 U.S. counties have banned them, including 12 in Michigan, 11 in North Carolina, and 9 each in Ohio and Georgia. Almost all these bans are short term, but some places like Vermont's Royalton have 5-year bans in place, and California's Monterey Park is considering a permanent ban. Another metric of the impact of political resistance is the number of project cancellations. We counted at least 88 such cancelled projects since 2021.

To figure out why Americans are spooked by AI data centers, we conducted a survey through YouGov in March 2026. The survey asked 2,187 respondents their awareness of AI chatbots and their preferences for data centers. The respondents were asked about their support for data center moratoria at various levels of government followed by what their major concern about data centers was. Figure 1 summarizes these results. All presented estimates are weighted to match the YouGov national profile.

Image Lightbox

Download Full Image

Figure 1: Extent of support for data center bans at national, state, and local levels.

Respondents were first asked how much they support a national ban on data centers. The most common response (45%) was "not sure," but 35% of the sample supported a national ban, while 20% opposed a ban. Those who said they were "not sure" or opposed a national ban were subsequently asked about their support for state-level bans. Support for either a state or national ban on data centers came to 46% of the sample (second blue bar in Figure 1). Those who said they were "not sure" or opposed both a national ban and a state ban were then asked about their support for a county ban. This brought the total support for any type of ban to 52% (third blue bar in Figure 1).

The entire sample of respondents were then asked about a proposed county data center. Surprisingly, the support for a county data center was almost twice that of those who opposed any type of ban at 32% (fourth red bar in Figure 1). Respondents that supported one of national/state/county bans, but supported a local county data center came to about 10% of the sample. These respondents did not grasp that a national/state/county ban would mean a county data center will not be built. Even with such a confusion, opposition to data centers is the most common reaction.

There is some geographic variation in preference for state bans. Figure 2 illustrates the support for a state ban at the state level.¹ The size of the pie chart is proportional to the state's representation in our sample. In all states except Wyoming and Alabama, respondents that wanted a state ban outnumbered those who were actively opposed to a ban. Residents of Maine, Vermont, Maryland, and Georgia (among others) overwhelmingly supported a state or national ban. States with a concentrated data center presence (such as Virginia, Texas, Ohio) recorded high but not overwhelming support for a national or state ban, with a sizable percentage saying they were "not sure."

Image Lightbox

Download Full Image

Figure 2: Support for a state ban at a state level.

Even with similar levels of opposition, there is great variability in political action. For example, Texas and Michigan both have similar levels of support for a state ban, but only one county in Texas has a ban as compared to 12 counties in Michigan. State-level data center bans are moving through at least 18 state legislatures, but many are stalled in committee and will never be voted on. Instead of outright bans, state governments are rolling back some of the tax incentives and looking for assurances that the utilities and consumers won't be holding the bag once transmission upgrades are made.

Across all four questions, it is clear that a sizable portion of the American public is wary of data centers. What concerns are driving this? Early reporting on data center opposition implied that local opposition is driven by worries about freshwater use. Several high-profile data center projects such Amazon's Project Blue and Google's Project Flo were cancelled specifically because of water use.

When asked what their biggest environmental concern was (see Figure 3), however, more than 45% of the sample identified their major environmental concern to be electricity use by data centers. Only 27% identified water use as the major concern. Another 12% identified groundwater contamination as their major concern, and 5% said their major concern was noise. Perhaps those initial concerns about water were superseded by concerns about data center electricity demand in the recent months.

Image Lightbox

Download Full Image

Figure 3: Major concerns about data centers.

Though concerns about water are possibly exaggerated by misleading early reporting, the public is right to worry about data center electricity use. Data center operators concede that getting sufficient power is their major bottleneck. Some operators are resorting to onsite energy generation, but gas turbines are also in short supply and tend to degrade local air quality. Hyperscalers are buying up mothballed nuclear plants just to meet the AI computational demands of their data centers (Duane Arnold in Iowa and Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania). But these restarts are several years away.

One thing is clear: the race to scale computing capacity is only just beginning. More and more Americans are becoming regular users, and demand for computation is increasing commensurately. Vacancies in data centers are at an all time low. The data center rental rates are eye watering. Anthropic, who runs the popular Claude models, are paying SpaceX-owned data centers $15 billion per year to meet their demand.

But, hyperscalers will need to confront public opposition to siting AI data centers. Many hyperscaler providers are diversifying to new markets with the largest ever data center approved in Utah this month. Others are hoping to avoid data center politics entirely and shoot them into space.

¹ We consider support for a national ban as implying support for a state ban.

Interested in subscribing to receive LCSSP's latest updates?

If you are external to Caltech, fill out this form.

If you are on the Caltech network, use these links to subscribe: LCSSP Mailing List, LCSSP BioPolicy Initiative, and LCSSP Democracy Mailing List.

For help or questions, please reach out to [email protected]!