The Anti-Data Center Movement: When Fear Trumps Facts

Thank you for joining us this Saturday morning. In our first piece of 2026, we wrote about the growing opposition to data centers. The issue was still moving toward a crescendo, with much of the media and political world unaware at the time we wrote of the issue’s potency.

Not anymore. In the months since, data centers have become among the highest-salience political and policy topics in the country. 

Scores of local governments – and even one state – have passed moratoria prohibiting data center development. Environmental activist organizations are litigating data center rezoning approvals (and fundraising off of their actions) all over the place. 

Today we’re checking back in on the topic, and offering some sober analysis that often gets lost in the passions of the mob.

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The anti-data-center movement is “one of the biggest political opportunities that I’ve personally ever seen,” Astra Taylor said at a recent “ecosocialism” event put on by the Democratic Socialists of America, as reported by the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.

Taylor is a “hugely influential figure on the modern left,” helping lead a panoply of well-funded far-left organizations. Data centers, Taylor said, offer a physical manifestation – an object and a gathering place – for activist groups to concentrate their attention and leverage power against “the billionaire agenda.”

She’s right. All across North Carolina and the United States, an alphabet of left-wing organizations are recruiting new members, growing their donor base, and exercising an in-your-face opposition style that most local elected officials have never experienced in their lives. 

Their success has been ferocious in its scale and speed. When we first wrote about this in January, just one local jurisdiction in North Carolina had passed a data center moratorium. Now the number is 22 (and growing). 

But what exactly are they organizing against? What’s the supposed terror behind which Taylor and others like her are drafting?

Physically, a data center is nothing more than a few large buildings full of powerful computers that store data and run applications. Just like roadways facilitate physical transportation, data centers facilitate digital consumption. Data centers, like roads, aren’t driving habits and technology: They exist because of habits and technology.

The public fears about data centers generally focus on three things: water, power, and noise. There are legitimate questions on this, especially for neighbors. 

But disinterested and rational observers have slowly begun to realize that those issues can be mitigated. “The data center panic is overblown,” The Atlantic wrote in June.

Take water, for example. Go on Facebook, and you’ll find endless posts claiming data centers will suck municipal water supplies dry. But in 2023, “data centers directly consumed 66 billion liters of water,” The Atlantic wrote. “That number sounds alarming, until you realize that America’s golf courses used almost 2 trillion liters that same year.”

In fact, the nation’s data centers use less water than California’s almond farmers.

Power, too, is a similar – if more complicated – story. Data centers do indeed use lots of power. But to blame data center existence for power bill increases is foolish. “Critics often seize on the fact that electricity prices have been rising in Virginia, where data centers account for almost 40 percent of the state’s electricity use,” The Atlantic wrote. “But electricity prices are rising faster in some states with far less data-center development – for instance, New Jersey and Maryland. And Texas, which is building more data centers than Virginia, has kept prices low by increasing capacity.”

The smart jurisdictions have seen past the hysteria. They’ve looked at the legitimate issues that data centers present and developed smart ways to mitigate them. In so doing, they’re cashing in on one of the biggest local-tax-base gold rushes in history.

Just this week, WRAL reported on why Richmond County “said yes to Amazon’s $10 billion data center.” County leaders did their own due diligence on things like water usage: “Amazon is not expected to rank among Richmond County’s five largest water users once the campus reaches full build-out.” 

Even with local incentives (which are far from guaranteed for other projects around the state given the political climate), this single project “would amount to nearly one-third of all the county’s relevant property tax,” or roughly $30 million, at a minimum, the Charlotte Observer reported. Matching that would take an estimated 20,000 to 36,000 new single-family homes, roughly doubling the county’s entire housing stock. And unlike those homes, a data center doesn’t require new roads, schools, or services to support it.

Catawba County has been home to a large Apple data center for over a decade, with several Microsoft data centers planned in the coming years. Last month, the county, along with several towns within its boundaries, issued a joint statement supporting its experience with these projects: 

“This strategic industry cluster, anchored here in Catawba County, supports thousands of well-paying jobs locally and across the region. We cannot ignore the connection between these industries, our existing workforce strengths, and the type of investment our community is now attracting. Together, they represent a competitive advantage for our community.”

And in Lee County, officials took their time earlier this year adopting a set of ordinances relevant to data centers. “Let’s put in place standards that are reasonable and don’t rule out a vital industrial activity that’s essential to every aspect of our modern society,” Jimmy Randolph, CEO of the Sanford Area Growth Alliance, told us recently.  

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How state and local policymakers address this matter in the medium term will impact North Carolina’s economic development – and local tax base – landscape for decades to come. 

This isn’t a binary choice between reckless development and total prohibition. The jurisdictions getting it right are asking reasonable questions about water, power, and noise, then writing ordinances to address the answers.

That’s a more challenging path than a moratorium. After all, it requires local officials to sit through contentious hearings, read technical reports, and resist the temptation to take the politically expedient off-ramp that activist groups are all too happy to hand them. But it’s the path that keeps North Carolina competitive at a moment when this kind of investment is being fought over by every state in the country, and it’s the path that actually serves the people these officials represent.

Some of the jurisdictions that passed moratoria in the passions of the moment may want to reverse course when the sober light of reason catches up to the fear. By then it’ll probably be too late – the deals will have already been cut. The lesson from the counties doing this well is the same one we offered when we first flagged this fight in January: the data center opposition movement is powerful because it’s organized, not because it’s right. 

The counties that take time to realize this will come out ahead.