NC, Big Tech and Data Centers: Here we go again
Local communities say no to Big Tech and Data Centers
Whenever you do an internet search, stream a video, send an email, or buy something online, you use a data center. They concentrate a lot of computing power in a (relatively) small space and can use enough electricity to have a significant effect on the local electrical grid. The rise of artificial intelligence (AI: like ChatGPT and Claude) has triggered the construction of even larger (“hyperscale”) data centers, with even greater impacts. Training AI models and deploying them (what happens when you interact with Chat GPT) uses orders of magnitude greater computing power than, say, watching a movie online. With his recent Executive Order (E.O. 14318), Trump will make it harder for states and localities to challenge the construction of new data centers.
North Carolina, like the rest of the nation, is seeing massive data center growth. Click here for an interactive map of data centers in operation or planned in North Carolina; this is probably not exhaustive, as much data about data centers is kept confidential!. A typical rate-payer in North Carolina paid about $140 a month for power in 2023. By 2026, that has increased to about $162, a 16% increase. By 2029, the average monthly cost is expected to increase to $192, a 37% increase in just 6 years. Much of this increase is due to current and anticipated growth in demand due to data centers. Local communities are beginning to address the problems associated with the explosive growth growth in data centers. They recognize the dangers of allowing narrow interests to engage in activities that benefit one sector of society to the detriment of local communities.
A hyperscale center can use as much power as a small city. Currently, about 10% of American data centers are rated at greater than 1 gigawatt (GW) load. For scale, 1 GW is about 20% of New York City’s entire load. Developers expect that, by 2035, a whooping 32% of data centers will exceed 1 GW!
Grid operators expect that long term changes in demand will expand with the capacity to meet it.. Laws allow grid operators to raise rates for the whole community to pay for the extra power that data centers need. Thus, rates for all residents can increase to accommodate grid changes needed to power a large data center. Although in March 2026, executives from a bunch of tech firms signed a nonbinding ratepayer protection pledge at the White House, pledging to build, bring, or buy the power and grid infrastructure upgrades needed by their facilities, unfortunatelyt, “neither the president nor tech companies control who pays for expansions of electrical grids”. Utility regulators make the final decisions.
Data centers usually need to run 24/7, but grid power can sometimes fail or become limited by increased demand. Many data centers on the grid have their own co-located emergency generators, often diesel powered, so they can maintain operations even if they do not get adequate power from the grid. These generators produce substantial air pollution, both particulates and greenhouse gases. Furthermore, they are loud. Even when the generators are not running, data centers are far from quiet, as there is a constant noise from the cooling systems and the power being used. This gets worse when the emergency generators come online, which happens not just during real emergencies, but also during periodic testing that is needed to assure they will work in an emergency.
It can take years for a data center to be approved, and a data center can generate revenues of $10-12 billion per GW annually, so there is strong economic pressure to bypass the grid entirely and generate power at the data center, “behind-the-meter”. This largely protects residential rate-payers, but it is no panacea. The explosive growth of data centers means extensive lead times in conventional generators, so data centers are using whatever is available, often inefficient and almost certainly more polluting than power from the grid would be. Nationally, around 30% of new data centers are planned to be behind-the-meter.
Data centers need a lot of water to cool processors. For example, a recently proposed 300 MW (megawatt) center in New Hill, North Carolina, near Apex was expected to use an average of 300,000 to 450,000 gallons of reclaimed water per day, up to a million of gallons of water on hot days. That peak level is equal to about a fifth of Apex’s average daily water use. The plan was to use reclaimed water, but even so, about a third of that water would evaporate and not be returned to the Cape Fear River basin. It would strain the local water economy. In more water stressed regions, this level of water loss can represent a major local problem for communities.
Some communities have decided that the economic local benefits through salaries and property taxes of data centers are not balanced by the expected costs. Much of the planning for data centers is often kept secret from the local community or hidden behind non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) signed by local decision-makers. There are examples of local NC communities pushing back against proposed data centers. For example, developers withdrew plans for the proposed data center in New Hill, mentioned above, because of local opposition. Similarly, developers of a proposed data center near Matthews, North Carolina, withdrew their proposal after strong local opposition. The developer of a data center proposed for Mooresville, North Carolina withdrew its proposal after strong local backlash. Several communities have proactively enacted moratoria on considering new data centers until they can explore the problems and modify their land-use policies. These include Chatham County, Gates County and the town of Canton in Western North Carolina, which have enacted a 12 month moratorium. During its April 21, 2026 business meeting, the Orange County Board of Commissioners (BOCC) voted unanimously to establish a one-year moratorium on large-scale data centers as a land use in Orange County.
For further reading:
A good recent overview of data center development from Consumer Reports: https://www.consumerreports.org/data-centers/ai-data-centers-impact-on-electric-bills-water-and-more-a1040338678/
A summary of the development of behind-the-meter power generation by an industry analyst: https://cleanview.co/content/power-strategies-report
An extensive account of the impacts of data center development, focused on North Carolina: https://protectwakecounty.org/data-center-impacts
Video of a presentation before the Orange County Board of County Commissioners about a possible 1 year moratorium on data center construction in Orange County. https://orangecountync.cablecast.tv/show/44?seekto=8290&site=1
