The AI Data Center Boom Is Colliding With Cities Scarred by Big Industry
The AI data center backlash is intensifying across the country, as Americans debate how new construction might reshape their neighborhoods. Data center companies promise new jobs and economic growth, but that pitch hasn’t won over most Americans, many of whom oppose construction in their area over environmental and energy concerns.
For activist Shawmar Pitts, these concerns aren’t theoretical. He knows firsthand what it’s like to live in the shadow of American industrialization.
One Neighborhood’s History With Industrial Pollution
A lifelong resident of Philadelphia’s Grays Ferry neighborhood, Pitts grew up next to what was once the East Coast’s largest oil refinery, which shut down after an explosion in 2019. Many of his friends and family suffered chronic health conditions, though he didn’t connect the dots until encountering environmental justice group Philly Thrive in 2018.
“I read the information they had on the table about how living near the refinery affects you, and I’m looking at all the sicknesses on this paper, and I’m like, ‘My mother has this, my sister has that, my next-door neighbor suffers from this,’ every house, someone has something on that list,” Pitts told TechCrunch. “From that point, I was all the way in.”
Now managing co-director of Philly Thrive, Pitts is leading efforts toward a data center moratorium in Philadelphia. While no formal construction proposals exist yet, city officials have identified two potential sites, one in Northeast Philadelphia, and the other in Pitts’ own Grays Ferry neighborhood.
Why the AI Data Center Backlash Runs Deepest in Industrial Towns
Data center opposition isn’t unique to Philadelphia. Residents nationwide have pushed back against new construction, particularly in communities with limited resources. But pushback has been especially fierce where big industry’s mark remains freshly felt.
“We don’t want data centers,” Philly Thrive board president Sonya Sanders said at a Monday rally outside Philadelphia’s City Hall. “We don’t want the pollution, we don’t want the noise, and we know they’re not going to bring us more jobs.”
Sanders’ husband, also a Grays Ferry resident, died of rare bone cancer in 2020. He didn’t smoke or drink, and she believes refinery emissions caused his illness. “In my eyes, they killed him,” she said. “The pollution killed him. I believe he would be here today if he wasn’t silently murdered, because it was the pursuit of profit that killed him.”
The Real Environmental Math Behind AI Growth
A Philadelphia data center likely wouldn’t match the environmental impact of the now-defunct refinery, which once processed up to 335,000 barrels of crude oil daily. But the global race to dominate AI has grown so intense that BloombergNEF predicts US data centers will consume more natural gas than Germany and Japan combined by 2035, nearly double the firm’s projection from just nine months earlier.
Natural gas burns cleaner than oil, but it’s far from harmless. Burning one cubic foot releases the equivalent of 60 grams of carbon dioxide, and rising data center demand is expected to generate an extra 1 million metric tons of greenhouse gas pollution daily, roughly 12% of current total US emissions. Harvard researchers found in 2021 that fossil fuel air pollution causes one in five deaths worldwide, a figure likely to climb further as AI infrastructure expands.
“A typical data center planned in Pennsylvania has hundreds of diesel engines that spew air pollution, and even if they’re supposedly reserved for emergencies, the government has already said that the data center should use those rather than drawing from an overstressed electrical grid during some heat waves,” said Clean Air Council attorney Annie Fox at the rally. “We can expect that to get more frequent. Fossil fuel-hungry data centers will worsen climate change, making those heatwaves more frequent and severe.”
How Officials Are Responding to the AI Data Center Backlash
Concerned citizens nationwide appear to be reaching their elected officials. In New York, Governor Kathy Hochul signed an executive order temporarily halting new permits for large projects. “Progress shouldn’t arrive with a higher utility bill, deleted water supply, or noise pollution,” Hochul said. “These data centers can only be built, should only be built in places that want them.”
Data center moratoriums have also passed in several US cities, including Denver, Indianapolis, Asheville, Charlotte, and Reno, typically giving officials time to gather more information about potential impacts before allowing construction to proceed.
What Philadelphia Residents Are Saying
“I’m worried about pollution,” Donna Greenberg, a Philadelphia resident who attended the rally, told TechCrunch. “I’m worried about surveillance and the fact that they’re going to have access to information they have no business knowing, and I’m concerned that they’re going to be using water and electricity that takes away from the people and the neighborhoods who need it.”
More than 100 people attended Monday’s kickoff rally for the No Data Centers in Philly campaign, chanting loudly outside City Hall in hopes council members would hear them from inside.
“I just think that our community standing up and fighting back is tremendous,” Pitts said. “It takes a lot of effort and a lot of people,” a sentiment now echoing across cities confronting the same fast-moving AI data center backlash.