Across the US, a debate is growing over whether new AI data centers should be built in local backyards. Companies promise jobs and economic growth, but most Americans oppose construction in their area, citing environmental and energy worries.
For activist Shawmar Pitts, those concerns are not abstract. He knows better than anyone what it is like to live in the shadow of American industrialization.
A lifelong resident of the Grays Ferry neighbourhood in Southwest Philadelphia, Pitts grew up next to what was then the East Coast’s largest oil refinery. That facility shut down after an explosion in 2019. Though many of his friends and family suffered from chronic health conditions, he did not realise what might have caused these illnesses until he encountered the environmental justice group Philly Thrive, which was tabling in his neighbourhood in 2018 about a proposed oil refinery expansion.
“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.”
Pitts, who is now the managing co-director of that same organisation, is among those leading the charge for a data center moratorium in Philadelphia. While there have been no formal proposals for construction yet, city officials have identified two potential sites: one in Northeast Philadelphia and the other in Pitts’ Grays Ferry neighbourhood.
Data center opposition from local residents is not unique to Philadelphia. Residents across the United States have pushed back against new data center construction, particularly those living in cities and towns with finite resources.
But the pushback has been particularly swift from people living in communities where big industry’s mark is still felt.
“We don’t want data centers,” Philly Thrive board president Sonya Sanders said at a rally on Monday at 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, who was also a resident of Grays Ferry, died of a rare bone cancer in 2020. She said he did not smoke or drink, and she believes that emissions from the refinery caused his illness.
“In my eyes, they killed him,” she 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 Philadelphia data center may not have as severe an environmental impact as the now-defunct Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery, which processed up to 335,000 barrels of crude oil daily. But the international race to dominate the AI industry has become so extreme that by 2035, BloombergNEF predicts that US data centers will consume more natural gas than Germany and Japan combined. That is almost double the firm’s projection from nine months ago.
Natural gas burns a lot cleaner than other fossil fuels, like oil, but it is far from harmless. Burning one cubic foot of natural gas releases the equivalent of 60 grams of carbon dioxide, and additional data center demand is expected to generate an extra 1 million metric tons of greenhouse gas pollution each day, which is about 12% of all present day US greenhouse gas emissions. Harvard University researchers found in 2021 that fossil fuel air pollution is responsible for one in five deaths worldwide, a staggering figure that is bound to increase in the age of AI.
“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.”
Concerned citizens across the country do seem to be getting through to their officials. In New York, Governor Kathy Hochul signed an executive order that temporarily prevents the state from approving new permits for large projects.
“Progress shouldn’t arrive with a higher utility bill, deleted water supply, or noise pollution,” Hochul said at a press conference. “These data centers can only be built, should only be built in places that want them.”
Data center moratoriums have also been approved in a number of US cities, including Denver, Indianapolis, Asheville, Charlotte, and Reno. The purpose of these moratoriums is often to allow city officials to collect more information about the potential impacts of building data centers.
“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 the kick-off rally for the No Data Centers in Philly campaign on Monday, chanting loudly in hopes that city council members would hear them from inside their offices at City Hall.
“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.”
What it means
For people making things with AI, the implication is clear: the infrastructure required to run these models is already under fire in communities that have suffered from industrial pollution. This means the growth of generative AI and creative tools will likely face stricter local regulations and public scrutiny, particularly in areas where resources like water and electricity are already strained.
