Public opposition to data centers is spreading like wildfire, fueled by soaring electricity bills and concerns about pollution, water, and job loss.
“The data center rebellion is here, and it’s reshaping the political landscape,” as the Washington Post put it in January. The opposition is grassroots, urban and rural, and spans the political divide.
Moms Clean Air Force helped center air pollution and health impacts in a Wisconsin farming community’s successful campaign to stop a proposed AI data center. Tens of billions of dollars in data centers were derailed last year. And more than 230 consumer and environmental groups signed a letter to members of Congress, calling on them “to support a national moratorium on the approval and construction of new data centers.”
Tell Congress: Hold Zeldin Accountable for Corrupting EPA’s Mission
So it’s no surprise that big AI “hyperscalers,” like Google, Meta, and Microsoft, launched an industry counteroffensive with one of those benign-sounding names, “AI Infrastructure Coalition.” Google’s own AI calls it “the lobbying arm for the massive buildout required to power and house artificial intelligence.” Axios reports that one of its goals is not so benign: to “push back on increased scrutiny of the industry.”
But what may be surprising is that a charter member of the group is ExxonMobil, one of the world’s largest oil and gas companies and producers of petrochemicals, the fossil-derived building blocks of plastics and other materials. Also, coalition co-chair Garret Graves is a former five-term Congressman representing southern Louisiana who Politico described as “a leading voice advocating for oil and natural gas production.”
Yes, one more of the dirty secrets is that hyperscalers are working closely with major fossil fuel and petrochemical companies to help them use AI to find and produce more oil, faster and cheaper than ever before. For instance, Exxon has been working with Microsoft for years to use machine learning and cloud computing to “generate billions in net cash flow” and “expand production growth by as much as 50,000 oil-equivalent barrels per day by 2025.”
Worse, the frantic rush to build data centers has many hyperscalers deploying the dirtiest types of methane gas power systems to run them. Indeed, as an October TechCrunch article noted, “the AI era is giving fracking a second act.”
Thanks to the data center boom, the cleanest, most efficient gas plants have tripled in price and are sold out through 2030. So, many companies are turning to dirtier turbines normally used for providing peak power a few hundred hours a year.
As Moms’ Isabel González Whitiker, who lives in Memphis near Elon Musk’s xAI supercomputer, wrote last year, “xAI has been operating 35 heavily polluting gas turbines without an air permit, in violation of the Clean Air Act.”
In December 2024, Exxon itself announced it would get into the business of designing “massive” gas-fired power generation for data centers. In October, CEO Darren Woods told investors, “We’re very, very engaged with most of the hyperscalers on the opportunity.”
Meanwhile, NextEra, another coalition member and a major renewable developer, is planning to build three data centers with Google across the country. “A lot of those will get started with what I call bridge power—renewables, storage,” the CEO told investors. “We’re also at that same time planning for the gas to come behind it.”
For decades, methane gas, also referred to as natural gas, was promoted as a bridge fuel to renewables. Apparently, in a world of upside-down priorities, renewables are the bridge fuel to gas.
The other leg of the data center industrial complex is the Trump administration, which has been doing everything in its power to make renewables—the cheapest, cleanest, and fastest form of power to deploy—more expensive and harder to deploy. And it’s been forcing utilities to revive uneconomic coal plants, which could raise U.S. electricity bills up to $6 billion.
Trump infamously told oil executives in May 2024 that if they backed his campaign with a billion dollars, he would kill the regulations they opposed. Ultimately, they spent “a stunning $445m throughout the last election cycle,” the Guardian reported last January.
Similarly, tech bosses who wanted less regulation backed Trump with $273 million, led by hyperscaler Elon Musk with over $240 million. Venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz each donated $2.5 million to a pro-Trump super PAC. Their $90 billion VC firm, Andreessen Horowitz (also known as a16z), is also one of the founding members of the AI Infrastructure Coalition.
The coalition is working “hand in glove with the Trump Administration as we prepare for AI American dominance,” explained co-chair Kirsten Sinema in October. The former Arizona Senator became a lobbyist for a data center developer in 2025.
It’s no surprise Trump has been an aggressive proponent of massive data center projects. Hyperscaler spending has become the driver for much of GDP growth, and the administration needs to keep that growth as high as possible going into the 2026 election.
One final member of the data center industrial complex is the nuclear industry. A December Bloomberg expose, “How a Nuclear-Fossil Fuel Alliance Is Winning the Fight for Energy Dominance,” detailed how the two industries have found common cause in supporting Trump and working to block renewables. Trump’s former Secretary of Energy, Rick Perry, even launched his own nuclear power company—and then Trump’s own media company merged with a nuclear fusion start up.
Yet, ironically, as my January analysis for UPenn of New York State’s new plan to build several large nuclear reactors says, “new reactors are the only option that worsens the affordability problem but can’t be built fast enough to help address the AI data center demand crisis.” It’s highly unlikely that much power could be delivered from new U.S. reactors before 2035. But electricity bills would go up long before then, since utilities can raise rates during the construction phase.
Is there a solution that is both clean and affordable? Absolutely. The lead author of a December study noted that thanks to a 40% price drop in 2024, and a further drop last year, “The economics for batteries are unrecognizable.” As a result, “Solar is no longer just cheap daytime electricity; solar is now anytime dispatchable electricity.” A September report explains, how rooftop solar plus storage “can meet 100 percent of data center demand growth,” over the next five years.
Tell Congress: Hold Zeldin Accountable for Corrupting EPA’s Mission
Joseph Romm is a former Acting Assistant Secretary of Energy and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media.