Data centers news and discussion

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How Local Communities are Challenging Big Tech Data Centers’ Noise, Pollution and Rising Electricity Bills
By Rachel Mural
June 18, 2026

Introduction:

(The Conversation) As the race to build data centers across the United States accelerates, local governments worry that the tech industry mantra of “move fast and break things” means their communities are at risk of being broken.

I’m a Harvard researcher studying the relationship between data centers and energy. I’ve closely monitored how local governments respond to proposals or even just concerns about the potential for data centers in their communities. What I’ve found is a complex story of community needs, political tensions and corporate power – all interacting with local, state and national democratic processes.

Promises and potential

Technology companies stay competitive by being ready to provide data and communications services even before customer demand rises. Data centers already power online communications, shopping and banking systems. Now, expanding demand for artificial intelligence has led to over 1,000 pending data center proposals across the country.

Federal actions also drive development. The Trump administration has identified data center build-out as a strategic priority. The administration has promoted data center capacity as a measure of American strength and signaled that federal regulations on data centers may be eased.

Read more here: https://theconversation.com/how-local- ... s-284642

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Plans for £9.5bn data centre next to Universal park

19 June 2026

Plans are under way to build a data centre next to the proposed Universal theme park in Bedfordshire.

The 1.5 million sq ft (139,355 sq m) site at the former quarry of Quest Pit near Stewartby has planning permission for a film studio.

But David Kohler, director of Quest Park which owns Quest Pit, said they were applying for a change of use to a data centre which the Secretary of State said was of "national significance", external.

The former Luton Town Football Club chairman said it would cost £9.5bn to build and would be "one of the largest (in the UK) in terms of power".

He added that it would take two to three years to change the permission for the data centre through a development consent order (DCO) application.

It would then take a further two years to build, but he said he believe the Universal theme park "will be finished before we start".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c7vyn6v2gzpo



Quest Park

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A good reason for airing the arguments against data centers is that solutions to the problems they present make less sense if we don't understand the problems.

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A Solution to Data Center Backlash? Put them In Oil Fields.
By Jake Bittle
June 18, 2026

Introduction:

(Grist) Most Americans loathe data centers. Recent polling found that Democrats and Republicans alike would oppose having one in their neighborhood, and hundreds of communities across the country have fought against them, citing fears about noise, water contamination, and energy bills. After years spent courting tech companies, many politicians are now vowing to protect their constituents from their development. In just the past month, policymakers in New York, Texas, Pennsylvania, and Utah have proposed limits on the facilities. For the AI startups and others racing to secure more computing power, the question seems to be not which projects will face opposition, but which won’t.

A project unveiled this week in California’s Central Valley suggests a potential answer. California Resources Corporation, the state’s largest oil company, wants to build a 600,000-square-foot data center campus in the Elk Hills oil field about two hours north of Los Angeles. It hopes to avoid the nationwide backlash from communities that have watched the outfits developing these sprawling operations swallow up farmland or install diesel generators near residential neighborhoods.

It’s part of a new trend in the AI boom. More developers are proposing to build data centers in or near active oil and gas fields, which tend to sit far from densely populated areas and boast ready access to power. Projects are being planned in Texas, where the prolific Permian Basin oil patch has an abundance of natural gas, which can be used to generate electricity, and in Pennsylvania, which is already a leading producer of natural gas from shale. These projects are seen as a way of juicing revenues for legacy producers, even as the California project is unfolding in a state that has been trying to phase out fossil fuels.

California Resources Corporation executives have framed the deal, announced Monday, as a “responsible development” approach to the AI buildout—a claim that environmental activists in the state disputed.

Read more here: https://grist.org/energy/a-solution-to ... -fields/

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[firestar464]

"guys, solar is right there"

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Thieves Are Now Targeting AI Data Center Construction Sites for Copper and Expensive Equipment

Investigators recovered two stolen trailers carrying $1.3 million in data center supplies, including copper wire and infrastructure equipment.

By Luis Prada
July 3, 2026, 8:49am

Americans don’t seem like they’d be particularly broken up if the data center craze gripping corporate America were stopped dead in its tracks. According to recent polling, data center hate is one of the few things capable of uniting people across the political spectrum. At this point, the only people who’d genuinely miss them—besides the tech CEOs insisting we need them for reasons they can’t explain—might be the thieves making a fortune stealing the mountains of copper and equipment headed to their construction sites.

According to Business Insider, investigators recently recovered two stolen trailers near Chicago containing roughly $1.3 million worth of data center supplies, including $300,000 in copper wire stolen in Alabama, and another trailer carrying $1 million in infrastructure equipment taken from Florida. It’s a booming industry, with the US Department of Homeland Security estimating that cargo theft costs businesses about $35 billion a year, and the AI boom is now fueling a whole new niche within that black market.

Wherever data centers are being built, the thieves follow. We do live in a land of opportunity, after all, and what is a data center if not a giant opportunity to steal a lot of copper wiring to offset all the water the data center is going to be stealing from us?

The same race to build ever-larger data centers that has sparked public backlash over energy use, water consumption, and the menace they pose to nearby communities has also made an entirely new criminal economy. Every data center needs truckloads of valuable materials before the servers can be crammed in. Every new shipment is just another opportunity thieves can seize.

While the AI revolution threatens to kill countless jobs, leaving potentially millions of Americans in the lurch, maybe all those future jobless Americans can turn to the booming data center theft industry. Maybe AI is a job creator?

https://www.vice.com/en/article/thieves ... equipment/

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Data Center Fights Pit Social Values, Democracy and Capitalism Against Each Other
By Lauren Mullenbach
July 1, 2026

Introduction:

(The Conversation) Data center projects continue to generate controversy around the country. In part, that’s because a variety of different groups have competing interests – some in favor of them, some opposed and others with no direct view on data centers themselves, but with concerns that relate to aspects of data center operations and effects.

As a scholar of environmental justice and urban land use, I’ve seen these various conflicting forces at work in Michigan. More than 30 large and small data center projects have been proposed in the state in the past two years alone, including one by the university where I work.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is enthusiastic about bringing technology companies to the state, even posing with tech company CEOs in photo ops at the sites of proposed data centers.

But not everyone is as excited. In just one example of the opposition these projects can face, the local water company where I live, the Ypsilanti Community Utilities Authority, told the state it would not supply water for cooling a data center that the University of Michigan and Los Alamos National Laboratory had proposed within its service area.

So the University of Michigan proposed a different site in the next town over, Superior Township. That town manages its own water but gets its supply by buying it from both the Ypsilanti Community Utilities Authority and Ann Arbor township.

Read more here: https://theconversation.com/data-cente ... r-285680

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W

Big companies should have to shoulder the costs of the increase in demand they brought

Now bring the prices further down with renewables

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Erin Brockovich Says Data Center Risks Are Like the Infamous Contamination She Cleaned Up ‘On Steroids’
By Sam Gillette
July 11, 2026

Introduction:

(People) Erin Brockovich is once again ready to fight. This time, she’s helping everyday Americans keep an eye on data centers that environmental activists like her say are threatening wildlife and water supplies while taxing energy grids.

“I’m like, ‘Oh my God, this is Hinkley on fricking steroids,’” Brockovich, 66, says in an interview featured in this week’s issue of PEOPLE, referring to the past work that made her famous.

In the 1990s, the mom of three helped win a historic settlement in a class-action lawsuit against the Pacific Gas and Electric Company after she discovered the drinking water in Hinkley, Calif., had been contaminated by hexavalent chromium, a carcinogen.

The feisty advocate became a cultural icon when she was portrayed by Julia Roberts in a 2000 film for which Roberts won an Oscar.

Three decades later, Brockovich has launched a data center map*, brockovichdatacenter.com, to track the gigantic facilities that power artificial intelligence and computer power, which are cropping up across the United States and stirring controversy in the process.

Read more here: https://people.com/erin-brockovich-com ... 12015445

*To view the data center map: https://brockovichdatacenter.com

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Good.

These data centres are gonna kill us all... unless they are properly regulated.

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[firestar464]

love how OWID is laying out this intelligent, balanced explanation of the whole situation but all the people on bsky will take away from this is "ai bad"

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