AI data centers are becoming America’s newest political villain

OMG, nobody likes a whiner! Fine, perhaps your electric bill may spike and you'll be thrown out of your job. Grow a pair and find another line of work.

Wait, I know what you're thinking! Snitz where can I go to live next to one of these. I am your humble servant!

AI data centers are becoming America’s newest political villain

New research projects U.S. wholesale electricity costs could rise as much as 29% by decade's end, fueling a fast-growing political crisis for the industry

By Cris Tolomia, Quartz Media

Updated 18 hours ago

Americans' frustration with artificial intelligence is hardening into organized political opposition, driven in large part by anger over electricity costs tied to the rapid expansion of data centers across the country.

Gallup polling released last week found that roughly 70% of Americans would object to an AI data center being constructed in their community, citing worries about strain on local power resources and the prospect of higher monthly utility bills as their leading concerns. A YouGov and Economist survey conducted around the same period showed that a majority of Americans feel the pace of AI development is outrunning society's ability to manage it and that the technology will not produce broad economic benefits for ordinary people.

The backlash is already reshaping local politics. Community opposition stalled or halted 48 projects representing more than $156 billion in planned construction last year alone, according to Data Center Watch data cited by Fortune.

Underlying that resistance is a concrete financial concern. New findings in Environmental Research Letters tracked a more than doubling of data centers' slice of national power demand, from 1.9% to 4.4%, over the five-year span ending in 2023. Depending on the trajectory of data center growth, that same research estimates wholesale electricity prices nationwide could be anywhere from 6% to 29% higher by the end of the decade. In Virginia, a hub of data center construction, generation costs could spike as much as 57%.

Jeremiah Johnson, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at North Carolina State University and the study's lead author, said the scale of demand growth is without recent precedent in the power sector. "The challenge here is the magnitude of this demand we're talking about is really big. It's at a scale that dwarfs some of the other changes we've experienced to the power sector in recent years," Johnson told Fortune.

The study's modeling indicates that power suppliers would rely substantially on natural gas while also reactivating idle coal facilities, a combination the researchers estimate could increase carbon dioxide emissions from the electricity sector by as much as 28% before the decade is out. Without federal clean energy subsidies on the scale of those the Inflation Reduction Act had provided — incentives Congress largely repealed this year — the study found natural gas would shoulder about 70% of the incremental generation load, with coal, wind, and solar accounting for the balance.

The political fallout from rising electricity bills has already had a big impact in one election outcome. Democrat John McAuliff, a former White House climate adviser, defeated a Republican incumbent in Virginia's legislature last year, attributing his narrow win in part to voter frustration over utility costs linked to the concentration of data centers in Loudoun County. Virginia lawmakers are now weighing legislation that would shift certain grid-connection costs from residential customers to high-load users such as data centers.

The economic case for data centers has also come under scrutiny. Virginia missed more than $1.6 billion in tax revenue in fiscal year 2025 due to data center tax exemptions, while the industry added 1,610 jobs in that same period — a cost of about $1.2 million per new job, according to VPM.

The industry is responding with money. AI companies including Anthropic, OpenAI, and Meta $META -1.41% are directing at least $150 million into state and federal elections this year through political organizations, and have promised to absorb more of their electricity costs at the urging of President Donald Trump.