The cost and time for building data centers just increased after a blue tsunami swept Democrats into positions that had been Republican strongholds for decades, such as the governor’s chairs in Texas and Kansas. The pushback against data centers was definitely on the ballot, and the message was loud and clear: “We don’t want these noisy behemoths in our backyard.”
This signal was most prominent in Texas, where Gina Hinojosa, a relatively unknown state legislator, campaigned heavily in opposition to these projects and toppled Greg Abbott, a three-term incumbent governor. Abbott had embraced the data-center boom and only called a pause in August amid alarming poll numbers.
The problem is the U.S. needs to keep building data centers, which house thousands of computer servers, to process the clicks and taps that underpin modern life and to harness the productivity gains of an artificial-intelligence revolution that is already taking hold in the economy. Productivity gains are what drive wage increases without spurring inflation and are the basis for the high U.S. living standards compared with the rest of the world. The consequence of the election should not be the demonization of data centers but the opportunity to build them with community concerns in mind.
Data-center construction won’t stop, but the results of the midterm election give communities the upper hand in negotiating where and how they will be built, tempering the mad dash to put up these projects and halting some of the community-unfriendly solutions, such as deploying loud jet-aircraft engines as a quick way to generate off-grid electricity.
The builders of data centers will be wise to heed the message that they must be more transparent on how these projects will use energy, consume water and create noise. More scrutiny of large projects is welcome to head off abuses that could take place if developers had free rein to build these facilities.