Data centre battles marking politics worldwide

PARIS: Governments worldwide are pushing to attract AI computing infrastructure, but must grapple with data centres’ demands on resources and mounting local opposition.

The massive buildings stuffed with specialised chips hungry for power and water have sparked objections from locals around the world.

Voter concerns have sparked action from local and national governments, while American activists have called for nationwide demonstrations on July 18.

Here are some key points to know about the data centre debate:

What are the objections?

Opposition to data centres from the US to India tends to focus on three major themes: land, power and water.

Data centres can occupy vast swathes of land, with Meta’s Prometheus site in Ohio measuring “a significant part of the footprint of Manhattan”.

In countries with weaker property protections, some have complained of being shouldered aside in favour of tech construction — including Indian farmers in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, as tech news outlet Rest of World reported in April.

Meanwhile data centres filled with top-of-the-line chips can draw the energy of a city.

At 630 megawatts according to industry tracker Epoch AI, Prometheus is equivalent to around half a million American family homes.

Bloomberg News found in a September 2025 analysis that electricity could be as much as 267 percent more expensive in areas of the US with high concentrations of data centres.

And companies’ off-grid generators — such as SpaceXAI’s gas turbines at its Colossus facility in Memphis — have drawn complaints of their own.

The NAACP campaign group in April filed a legal case alleging the turbines are harming mostly Black neighbourhoods with pollutants.

As the chips get hot while they work, data centres need cooling — mostly using water.

While the absolute amount of water used is small — around 0.3 percent of total supply in the US, according to electronics magazine IEEE Spectrum — many are built in areas already facing high water stress.

Other complaints against data centres include carbon emissions, noise and ultra-low-frequency “infrasound” vibrations that can be felt in the body.

How have people responded?

American campaign group Humans First has called for a “National Day of Protest” against “the unaccountable buildout of data centres” on Saturday 18.

It was not clear in advance how many will follow the call from the conservative group, which follows months of a rising drumbeat of local opposition across the US.

Beyond civil opposition to data centres, security nonprofit The Soufan Group in May highlighted “a rise in direct threats against individuals perceived as driving (AI) technology forward” in the US.

Two major incidents this year have been a Molotov cocktail attack on OpenAI chief Sam Altman’s house and a gun attack on the home of an Indianapolis politician.

Beyond America, campaigners across Europe have challenged data centre projects on grounds from environmental concerns to claims governments have granted undue favours, such as a legal action in Spain’s Aragon region against a massive data centre buildout by Amazon.

And in densely-populated Japan, a shortage of space has projects being planned in or near residential neighbourhoods.

That has prompted legal action from some residents, such as against a proposed new data centre in Tokyo commuter town Inzai, which already hosts 10 facilities.

Governments step in

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has vowed to pass laws requiring data centres to feed into the power grid more than they draw and minimise water usage.

The country “cannot settle for a short-term boom in capital expenditure and construction,” he said this week.

Also, this week, New York became the first US state to impose a general moratorium on new large data centre projects, also citing power and water drain.

But Maine governor Janet Mills vetoed a similar would-be moratorium in April, citing the economic impact.

In Europe, Amsterdam has imposed a moratorium on construction of new data centres over space and power concerns.

And Denmark has placed data centres at the bottom of its priority list for access to electricity, warning of strain on its power grid.