The Guardian reported on December 8 local time that a coalition of more than 230 environmental organizations is calling for a nationwide moratorium on new data centers in the United States. These environmental groups, including Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Food & Water Watch, and dozens of local organizations, urge members of Congress to stop the expansion of high-energy data centers, accusing them of causing temperature rise emissions, consuming large amounts of water resources, and exacerbating electricity price hikes that have affected Americans this year.
"Data centers are sprouting up to fuel the AI and cryptocurrency boom, but regulation is severely lacking, which is disrupting communities across the country and threatening the economic, environmental, climate, and water security of Americans," the organizations wrote in a letter. Before new regulatory measures are introduced, they call for a pause in the approval of new data centers.
The report notes that this move comes as more and more communities oppose companies such as Meta, Google, and OpenAI investing billions of dollars in new data centers, which are primarily aimed at meeting the massive computing power needs of AI. At least 16 data center projects, with a total value of $64 billion, have been stalled or delayed due to local public opposition to rising electricity bills. These projects also require a significant amount of water for cooling, which has sparked controversy, especially in drought-prone areas.
October 2, 2025, New Carlisle, Indiana, USA: A technician works at an Amazon Web Services AI data center. IC Photo
According to reports, these seemingly local concerns are now expanding into a powerful political force, driving a series of significant victories for Democrats in state governor elections in Virginia and New Jersey, and causing a surprising reversal in a special election for the Georgia Public Service Commission. In these cases, candidates focused their campaigns on lowering electricity bills and limiting data centers.
This has become a major problem for Trump, who has strongly promoted AI development and dubbed himself the "affordability president," promising to halve energy costs within his first year in office.
However, during Trump's tenure, household electricity prices in the United States have risen by 13%. After recent electoral losses, the president criticized the so-called "affordability" issue as a fabricated "false narrative" and "scam" by Democrats. "They just say the word," Trump said last week, "it means nothing to anyone. They just say it—affordability."
Now, about 80 million Americans are struggling to pay their electricity and gas bills. According to Charles Hua, founder and executive director of the bipartisan organization PowerLines, many voters, regardless of political affiliation, blame this on data centers.
"We see rising utility bills becoming a central issue in elections in New Jersey, Georgia, and Virginia, indicating that the American political landscape is changing, and we are entering a new era centered around electricity prices," said Charles Hua.
He added, "No American wants to pay higher electricity bills, and in Georgia, a significant portion of conservative voters voted against Republican sitting officials, which was shocking." He stated that the reasons for rising electricity prices are complex, including increased power demand, aging transmission lines, and damage caused by extreme weather, which have increased utility company costs.
However, what truly incites voter anger is the rapid growth of data centers serving AI — their power consumption is expected to nearly triple over the next decade, enough to supply 190 million additional homes. Therefore, it has drawn strong opposition from American politicians ranging from the left-wing Bernie Sanders to the far-right Marjorie Taylor Greene.
More broadly, nearly half of Americans believe that the cost of living in the United States, including electricity, food, and other essentials, has reached its highest level since their memory began.
This concern over the cost of living provides a new attack point for the environmental movement. Previously, the environmental movement struggled to counter Trump's efforts to weaken regulations reducing air and water pollution. Trump claimed the climate crisis was a "scam," clean energy was a "scam," and significantly cut back or even blocked new wind and solar projects. However, in fact, renewable energy is usually the cheapest and fastest way to generate power.
At the current rate of growth, by 2030, data centers could emit up to 44 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, equivalent to adding 10 million cars to the road, thereby exacerbating the climate crisis that has already triggered extreme weather disasters and torn apart the U.S. insurance market structure.
Emily Wurth of the Food & Water Watch organization admitted that the issue causing most voters' anxiety was not the climate crisis, but the impact of electricity bills.
"What surprised me was the emergence of strong grassroots, cross-party opposition across various communities throughout the country," she said: "Everyone is affected, and the opposition spans the entire political spectrum. Many people don't see the benefits of AI, yet they feel they will be paying for energy bills and water resources."
Wurth said regarding affordability issues: "This is an important discussion point. We see utility prices skyrocketing all over the country, and we will focus on this issue. The prices of all goods and services are rising, which is what the American people really care about."
Notably, driven by companies like NVIDIA, the cloud service and AI boom has led to unprecedented demand for data centers, but power supply has become the biggest bottleneck in the United States, mainly due to aging grid infrastructure, slow construction of transmission lines, and various regulatory and licensing obstacles.
Recently, two data centers developed by Digital Realty and Stack Infrastructure have remained vacant for years due to local power shortages. In response, Bloomberg made a comment: "This highlights the major challenges facing the tech industry in the United States, and indeed the broader economy."
More "black humor" is that both centers are located near NVIDIA's headquarters — San Jose, California, USA.
Moreover, the pressure on the power system will only intensify. According to BloombergNEF forecasts, by 2035, the AI computing power demand in the United States alone may more than double. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman previously predicted that tens of billions of dollars would be invested in building new AI infrastructure.
This article is an exclusive contribution from Observers, and it cannot be reprinted without permission.
Original: toutiao.com/article/7581492467720143395/
Statement: This article represents the views of the author.