{"id":263272,"date":"2026-08-11T14:32:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T14:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/263272\/"},"modified":"2026-08-11T14:32:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T14:32:08","slug":"more-data-center-proposals-keep-coming-to-pennsylvania-so-does-the-outcry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/263272\/","title":{"rendered":"More data center proposals keep coming to Pennsylvania. So does the outcry."},"content":{"rendered":"

By Ethan Young, Pennsylvania Capital-Star<\/a>
August 10, 2026<\/p>\n

Ethan Young is a summer intern for the Pennsylvania Legislative Correspondents Association, and a rising senior at the University of Pennsylvania.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In January, as her curiosity about data centers grew, longtime Pennsylvania environmental activist Karen Feridun turned to Facebook to create a group she hoped would allow those who felt similar to ask questions, too.<\/p>\n

Two months later, the group surpassed 500 members. And in the weeks that followed, the numbers continued to grow. During some weeks, more than 1,000 new people signed up.<\/p>\n

Today, the Pennsylvania Data Center Resistance Facebook group has more than 41,000 members.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt really took off in ways that shocked me,\u201d Feridun said. \u201cIt\u2019s clearly of interest to people in a way that I\u2019ve never seen an issue be of interest.\u201d<\/p>\n

The influx of users to the Facebook group<\/a> reflects the surging discourse about data centers across the state, seen in grassroots social media groups, internet search traffic, and the flurry of bills sponsored by state lawmakers. It\u2019s all in response to souring public opinion as new projects are proposed across the state.<\/p>\n

A Quinnipiac University poll of<\/a> 895 Pennsylvania voters conducted last month found that 74% opposed having a data center built in their community while 16% said they supported it. Three-quarters of respondents said they were following news about AI data centers either very or somewhat closely.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe issue\u2019s salience to Pennsylvania voters has seen a rapid increase over the last year,\u201d said Chris Borick, a political science professor at Lehigh University. \u201cNot only is it an issue that Pennsylvanians increasingly said is important to them, it\u2019s an issue that they\u2019re incredibly concerned about in terms of the impact on their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

That \u201cmeteoric\u201d increase, as Borick noted, has altered the political landscape in the state. There\u2019s no comparable environmental \u2014 or even general political issue \u2014\u00a0has transcended party lines like this, he added.<\/p>\n

The Pennsylvania Data Center Resistance Facebook group began to rapidly grow this past spring. Gov. Josh Shapiro announced<\/a> Amazon\u2019s $20 billion investment to build AI data center infrastructure across Pennsylvania in June.\u00a0Around that same time, Pennsylvanians began searching for information about data centers more often.<\/p>\n

Google users from the commonwealth showed a growing interest in the search terms \u201cdata center\u201d and \u201cAI data center,\u201d throughout 2025 until last month, according to data from Google Trends. It measures search interest relative to a term\u2019s greatest popularity. The relative interest in both terms peaked in May.<\/p>\n

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Sarah Jackson, a professor of communications at the University of Pennsylvania, said she suspects more people are organizing around the issue not necessarily as a result of shifting public opinion, but because they are directly impacted.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor many people they seemed a far away thing if they knew they existed at all. But the combined economic and political power of the tech and energy industries has increasingly expanded into people\u2019s communities,\u201d she wrote in a statement.<\/p>\n

Calls and messages to state legislators from constituents regarding data centers have also ballooned in recent months.<\/p>\n

Sen. Katie Muth, (D-Berks), said it\u2019s the number one issue her office is hearing about. Her staff said the office has received 504 emails about data centers so far this year. An additional 182 emails referenced high electricity bills as a concern relating to data centers.<\/p>\n

And of the 807 calls her office has answered \u2014 encompassing 193 legislative issues \u2014\u00a072 have been about data centers.<\/p>\n

Beth Rementer, a spokesperson for the House Democratic caucus, said that while the feedback expressed to different members varies, data center development has been among the top issues constituents contacted lawmakers about over the last six months.<\/p>\n

\u201cOverall, people are strongly opposed to letting data centers operate without any regulation,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

Kate Flessner, a spokesperson for Senate Republicans said in a statement the perspectives of constituents are greatly beneficial to the work of the caucus.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe issue of data centers is certainly evolving and regional perspectives throughout the Commonwealth are differing and warrant careful examination,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Borick, the political science professor, said the number of data center bills introduced by lawmakers in recent months is a clear sign they are \u201cabsolutely following opinion and concerns.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think in Pennsylvania among other places, legislators in many ways were caught off-guard on how the public would respond to the proliferation of data centers and data center proposals,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

During the current session of the General Assembly \u2014\u00a0which began in January 2025 and runs until November \u2014 lawmakers have introduced at least 30 bills aimed at regulating, or in some cases accelerating, data center development, according to a keyword search of the LegisScan database.<\/p>\n

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Amid budget negotiations, lawmakers introduced eight proposals on the issue in May and eight more in June.<\/p>\n

The legislation introduced encompassed a wide range of proposals, from a three-year statewide moratorium<\/a>, sponsored by Muth to a bill sponsored by Sen. Greg Rothman (R-Cumberland) that, in its original form, would have expedited permitting<\/a> and created a \u201cregulatory sandbox\u201d for data centers.<\/p>\n

Several data center regulation bills were advanced by the Democratic-controlled House \u2014\u00a0including the plan backed by Shapiro \u2014\u00a0and nearly every lawmaker supported efforts<\/a> to repeal an existing sales and use tax exemption for data center equipment.<\/p>\n

Despite that consensus, the final $50.8 billion budget deal<\/a> reached by lawmakers in July only included language requiring data centers with electric outputs larger than 10 megawatts to submit information annually about their energy and water usage.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard for me to find an easy comparison point in terms of how it\u2019s reordered things in the state in lots of ways \u2014\u00a0and so quickly,\u201d Borick said of the politics surrounding data centers.<\/p>\n

]]><\/p>\n

Pennsylvania Capital-Star<\/a> is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Pennsylvania Capital-Star maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Tim Lambert for questions: info@penncapital-star.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Ethan Young, Pennsylvania Capital-StarAugust 10, 2026 Ethan Young is a summer intern for the Pennsylvania Legislative Correspondents…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263273,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-263272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}