Companies know how to build data centers that won't alienate communities.
But their desire to build these AI-processing plants faster than ever has resulted in sprawling, polluting, noisy, thirsty complexes more reminiscent of the industrial revolution than the era of artificial intelligence.
We could be living in a golden age of data centers, one in which communities welcome the contributions to their tax base and have little to fear in terms of noise, air pollution or rising utility rates. Decades-in-the-making technologies are now becoming viable alternatives to outdated systems for cooling and power. Data centers that blend into their communities and don't overtax local resources actually exist, they just don't make news.
Instead, pushback from communities over noise, electricity costs and secretive development processes across the U.S. is leaving many builders with a stark choice: Do better, or face indefinite delay-even cancellation.
At least 15 states have weighed moratoriums on data-center construction, and at least 100 localities have approved one, according to Brookings.
After interviewing experts, many inside the companies facing this pushback, I compiled a list of ways to build data centers that people won't hate:
Be more transparent
No matter how many commitments data-center operators make to safer, quieter, greener innovations, recent history has convinced many communities not to trust any of them. A big factor is the use of nondisclosure agreements that blind the public to a data center's arrival and impacts. Microsoft, for one, has agreed to stop using them.
The inexperience of some builders could be partly to blame. "Many new players are entering the space, perhaps looking to make a quick buck off the AI boom," says Caitilín McManus, an analyst at BloombergNEF who tracks power and water for data centers.
John Sutter, head of U.S. public affairs at data-center builder Nebius, echoed this sentiment. "There are bad apples in this space, including fly-by-night operators," he says. "That is a problem for this industry."
To overcome reluctance by locals, big tech companies are committing to community engagement and a set of principles that address the things residents worry about most. Microsoft, for example, calls its five-point commitment "community-first AI infrastructure."
For its gargantuan data center in Louisiana, Meta is committing to lowering the energy bills of locals and putting back more water than it takes out.
In Vineland, N.J., where Nebius is building a new data center for Microsoft, the company is engaging with locals who are worried it will operate unpermitted gas turbines on site. Any generators at the site are there temporarily to power construction equipment, says Sutter.
A Microsoft spokesman says the company expects its suppliers to obey all applicable laws and regulations, and it is working with Nebius to transition the site to its permanent, long-term power solution.
OpenAI recently announced $80 million in investment in community projects in Effingham County, Ga., where it seeks to build a massive, 3.2 gigawatt data center. "We understand why people are skeptical of data centers, and it's our responsibility to earn their trust," says a company spokesman. One sign it's eager to win over the people: a taco bar.
Mitigate utility rate hikes
It's going to take electric utilities years, even decades, to construct enough infrastructure to power all the gigantic new data centers in the pipeline. Companies say they are committing to paying for these upgrades, and the Trump administration is pressuring them to fully cover those costs, but it remains to be seen how these complicated deals will play out. The issue has become so contentious that politicians such as New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill are running-and winning-on pledges to hold down rates.
One workaround is for data-center operators to sidestep the grid by building their own power plants on or near their massive gigawatt-scale campuses. For the most part, this new infrastructure is powered by natural gas.
Historically, Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta, four of the most prodigious builders of data centers, have been among the world's biggest buyers and developers of renewable energy. For a number of reasons-including how much land renewables like wind and solar require-they can't build or buy them fast enough.
Seek cleaner energy
In addition to wind farms and solar arrays, companies are exploring geothermal and nuclear power, but all still cost more than natural-gas options.
Brandon Oyer leads energy and water strategy for Amazon Web Services. He is quick to tout the company's commitment to buying renewables. When I pressed him on why Amazon is also financing the construction of the biggest natural-gas power plant in U.S. history, in Pecos County, Texas, he said that the volume of demand from Amazon's cloud-computing customers drove that decision.
"I spend every waking hour thinking about how we get power and water to our sites responsibly," says Oyer. "In particular, we focus on efficiency-water-usage efficiency, power-usage efficiency-and we're industry leading or near the top for both," he adds.
Some companies are opting for hundreds of small natural-gas-powered generators at a given site. Others are buying bigger but relatively inefficient and polluting natural-gas turbines, or even repurposed jet engines.
SpaceXAI's Colossus complex of AI supercomputers and their power plants in and around Memphis, Tenn., have caused alarm and pushback from locals. Earlier this week, SpaceXAI posted on X that it has shut down 11 of its temporary turbines, part of a longer-term push to replace them with a large gas power plant "under the Clean Air Act permit."
Oracle, another data-center giant, was facing community pushback against its Jupiter data center in New Mexico. It pivoted from powering the site with natural-gas turbines to using cleaner, quieter fuel cells from Bloom Energy, up to 2.45 gigawatts.
"Each site has distinct priorities shaped by its physical layout, power source, and state and local regulatory framework," says an Oracle spokeswoman. Across all its sites, the company is committed to buying and using electricity in a way that benefits other utility customers and minimizes water use, emissions and noise, she adds.
Bloom's fuel cells transform natural gas into electricity. One of their waste products is carbon dioxide-but they emit less than the most efficient natural-gas engines. And because their other waste product is water, the center's net water loss will be comparatively minuscule.
Fuel cells from Bloom and others are still pricier than conventional alternatives, at least at current natural-gas prices. But according to analysis from Morgan Stanley, the cost of fuel cells is becoming more competitive as natural-gas turbines have grown more scarce.
Reconcile water use
In the little town of Hamina, Finland, Google is expanding a data center so respectful of its environment and neighbors that it is often cited as a benchmark. Cooled by seawater, the facility pumps its excess heat into a system that warms the adjacent town. This data center even has its own employee sauna.
If you're thinking, "How Nordic!" then yes, this data center was crafted with its locale in mind, and others should be, too.
Water use, linked as it is with power consumption, is an important local variable. Many facilities tout that they will use "closed loop" cooling systems that minimize on-site water use, but such systems can require more power than ones that use conventional, but thirstier, cooling.
So it has to be region specific: In a water-stressed area with plentiful renewable energy, the closed-loop system makes sense. But in an area with plentiful water but a higher percentage of water-hogging fossil-fuel power on the local grid, using more water in cooling could decrease net water use.
Revisit carbon-neutrality promises
Big tech companies have for years had commitments to carbon neutrality. Most are now delaying or recontextualizing those goals.
In the Texas Panhandle, where oil and gas still reign, massive data-center projects are already under construction. Even if residents don't mind the fossil fuels, they do care about water consumption and air quality. That is one reason the state has enacted a temporary moratorium on their construction.
These companies could solve a majority of their issues by slowing down the AI-infrastructure arms race and spending extra to build more modern, less noxious data centers.
That's not speculation-it's how they built data centers for most of the last 20 years. It wasn't until AI sparked fierce competition and an explosion in power demands that the industry changed course.
"When everyone is racing to build as quickly as possible," says McManus, "we really still have to consider what comes at the expense of that speed."
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