Across the United States, communities are increasingly debating how their lives could change if new AI data centers are built nearby. Data center developers and the companies using their infrastructure are promising jobs and economic growth, but those arguments have failed to convince a majority of Americans who oppose data center construction in their communities, often because of concerns about energy use and environmental impacts.
For activist Shawmar Pitts, those concerns are rooted in personal experience. Few people understand what it means to live alongside major American industrial operations better than Pitts.
Pitts has spent his entire life in the Grays Ferry neighborhood of Southwest Philadelphia, growing up beside what was once the largest oil refinery on the East Coast. The facility eventually closed after an explosion in 2019. Many of Pitts’ friends and relatives experienced chronic health problems, but he did not understand what might have contributed to those illnesses until he came across the environmental justice organization Philly Thrive, which was holding a community outreach event in 2018 about a proposed expansion of the oil refinery.
“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 said. “From that point, I was all the way in.”
Pitts is now the managing co-director of the same organization and is among the activists pushing for a moratorium on data center development in Philadelphia. While no formal construction proposals have been submitted so far, city officials have identified two potential locations: one in Northeast Philadelphia and another in Pitts’ Grays Ferry neighborhood.
Opposition to new data centers from local residents is not limited to Philadelphia. Communities throughout the United States have challenged proposed developments, particularly in cities and towns where resources such as electricity, water, and infrastructure are already limited.
However, resistance has been especially rapid in communities where the legacy of heavy industry remains visible and strongly felt.
“We don’t want data centers,” Philly Thrive board president Sonya Sanders said Monday during a rally outside Philadelphia 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, who also lived in Grays Ferry, died from a rare form of bone cancer in 2020. She said he did not smoke or drink and believes emissions from the refinery contributed to his illness.
“In my eyes, they killed him,” Sanders said at the rally. “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.”
A data center in Philadelphia would not necessarily have the same environmental footprint as the former Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery, which processed as much as 335,000 barrels of crude oil every day. However, the enormous scale of the global AI race is driving data center energy demand to levels that are raising new concerns.
By 2035, BloombergNEF predicts that U.S. data centers could consume more natural gas than Germany and Japan combined. That projection is nearly twice as high as the firm’s estimate from just nine months earlier.
Natural gas produces fewer emissions when burned than some other fossil fuels, including oil, but it is still far from impact-free. Burning a single cubic foot of natural gas releases the equivalent of approximately 60 grams of carbon dioxide. The additional demand created by data centers is expected to produce another 1 million metric tons of greenhouse gas pollution every day, equivalent to around 12% of current U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
Research from Harvard University found in 2021 that fossil fuel-related air pollution is responsible for one in five deaths worldwide, a figure that could increase as energy consumption grows during the AI era.
“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,” Clean Air Council attorney Annie Fox said at the rally.
Fox argued that the use of backup diesel generators could become more frequent and that data centers relying heavily on fossil fuels could contribute to climate change, potentially making heat waves both more frequent and more severe.
Residents concerned about the effects of data center development appear to be gaining the attention of government officials in some parts of the country. In New York, Governor Kathy Hochul signed an executive order temporarily preventing the state from approving permits for new large-scale data center projects.
“Progress shouldn’t arrive with a higher utility bill, deleted water supply, or noise pollution,” Hochul said during a press conference. “These data centers can only be built, should only be built in places that want them.”
Moratoriums on data center construction have also been approved in several U.S. cities, including Denver, Indianapolis, Asheville, Charlotte, and Reno. Such pauses are often intended to give local officials additional time to gather information and study the potential consequences of data center development.
“I’m worried about pollution,” Philadelphia resident Donna Greenberg, who attended the rally, said. “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 launch rally for the No Data Centers in Philly campaign. Participants chanted outside City Hall, hoping their message would reach the city council members working inside the building.
“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.”
