Data Center Proposal Tracker<\/a>, an independent website. Of the total, five are under construction and another five have been approved for construction.<\/p>\nAfter talking to developers, attending industry conferences, consulting academic experts and gathering input from community members, the researchers concluded that the industry would need huge quantities of land, water and energy, and that the state\u2019s \u201cresidual assets\u201d from earlier industrial development make it especially attractive to the industry.<\/p>\n
It also found that what it calls the boosters of AI use industrial nostalgia, nationalist fervor and union pride to mask a \u201cpower grab\u201d that echoes earlier generations of industrial development, most recently the growth of the natural gas industry in the 2000s.<\/p>\n
Some opponents of data centers are concerned that the huge amounts of power needed to feed the facilities would worsen climate change, the report said. Others say the centers threaten public health or undermine local democracy by failing to keep communities fully informed of developers\u2019 plans.<\/p>\n
Although Data & Society rejects any claim that it advocates for particular policies, the report is sharply critical of the tech industry, arguing that its heavy use of land, energy and water ignores local concerns and continues a historical pattern of exploitation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis report shows that the fight against data centers is about more than just AI,\u201d it said. \u201cFor many, it is also about resisting corporate greed, destruction of local knowledge and resources, and the accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few.\u201d<\/p>\n
The research group said the study was funded by part of a $1 million grant from the Mellon Foundation in 2023.<\/p>\n
In an interview, lead author Maia Woluchem said some communities have pushed back hard against data center projects, echoing and perhaps exceeding local resistance to earlier waves of industry like fracking or to the severe air pollution caused by generations of coal and steel production in southwest Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are lots and lots of reasons for folks to feel upset, and reflect on these generations of theft, and they feel taken for granted,\u201d she said. \u201cSo the data center becomes this symbol of larger remote systems, of inequality, of distrust, and really an instrument of power that folks are aiming to take back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Public opposition, the report said, shows data centers in Pennsylvania are not inevitable, as their supporters claim. \u201cUltimately, the unfolding case of Pennsylvania reveals the limits of AI\u2019s supposed inevitability in America\u2019s Keystone State,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
The report contains on-the-record conversations with 44 people but drew its conclusions from many more discussions across the state, Woluchem said.<\/p>\n
The report\u2019s conclusions match the findings of Citizens of Montour County, a community group that won a rare victory against a data center developer in February when county leaders denied a rezoning application that would have allowed a data center to be built on what is now farmland.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is probably the biggest thing that has hit Pennsylvania that everybody is rallying together against,\u201d said the group\u2019s president, Sam Burleigh. He thinks there is more public opposition to data centers than there has been against fracking for natural gas. Whereas that was localized, criticism of data centers is broader and based on environmental and social concerns. \u201cThat is what has put data centers as the main target of the time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The Pennsylvania chapter of the American Petroleum Institute dismissed criticism of AI industry plans to use increased natural gas production to power new data centers.<\/p>\n
\u201cEnergy is the foundation of our modern economy\u2013from the days of the Industrial Revolution to the invention of the internet and now the AI era, pushing power demand to new heights,\u201d said Stephanie Catarino Wissman, executive director of the chapter. \u201cPennsylvania\u2019s abundant natural gas can help address the load growth challenge and provide reliable baseload power while reducing carbon dioxide emissions.\u201d<\/p>\n
David Masur, executive director of the nonprofit PennEnvironment, said the study is the latest sign of the environmental, financial and public health dangers of data centers that together should lead state legislators to call for a moratorium on data center development so that there is time to consider other ways of protecting the public from the burgeoning industry. A bill this year introduced by state Sen. Katie Muth, a Democrat, would impose a three-year moratorium on the industry.<\/p>\n
Masur also argued that public opposition to the centers, regardless of party political affiliation or region, has turned data centers into a political issue just ahead of the midterm elections for Congress and state legislatures in November.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe polling is clear: the public is overwhelmingly concerned about the proliferation of data centers as well as the harms posed by AI writ large,\u201d Masur said in a statement. \u201cThis one-two punch has created public opposition to this industry that is pushing Americans to call on elected officials to take swift action.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Data Center Coalition, a trade group, did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
The potential economic benefits of the AI industry were stressed by President Donald Trump and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro at the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh in July 2025. Trump said then that private industry would invest $40 billion in data centers and another $50 billion in the energy needed to fuel them. Protesters said the claims ignored scientific warnings that increased natural gas production would worsen climate change by adding to greenhouse gases.<\/p>\n
David Hess, a former secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection who now publishes an environmental newsletter, predicted the strength of public opposition to data centers in Pennsylvania, as highlighted in the report, will be felt during this fall\u2019s elections.<\/p>\n
\u201cEnvironmental and community activism is on the upswing and building and politicians at all levels of government better pay attention or risk losing their jobs,\u201d he wrote in an email. \u201cPeople are fed-up being stomped on and ignored and in Pennsylvania we\u2019ve been stomped on by the best\u2013the coal industry, oil and gas industry, the timber industry and railroads for 175 years.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new study says the data center industry\u2019s expansion echoes patterns of environmental and health harms that have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":294541,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-294540","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\/294540","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=294540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294540\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}