Rural America rejects increased data center construction

But industry executives argue that the trade-off of water and energy is often misunderstood. Doug Adams of NTT Global Data Centers, the world’s third-largest operator of data centers, says closed systems can reduce energy consumption. “Building up front costs more, but in the long run it’s more efficient to use (cooling) to remove heat,” he says.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman—who initially committed to spending $600 billion on infrastructure by the end of 2030, according to people familiar with the matter—recently weighed in on the idea that data centers consume a lot of water. Appearing at the India AI conference in February, he said concerns about AI’s water use were “false,” arguing that water cooling was an old problem.

However, the number of projects planned for the next five years by hyperscalers and others means that water needs to increase.

An additional fear is the suspicion that AI offices are driving up electricity prices. On average, bill payers in America—including residential, commercial, and industrial customers—paid more than 6 percent of their electricity bills by the end of 2025. This increase was even greater in the Atlantic states that many data houses, such as Pennsylvania and Virginia, where the costs increased by 19 and 10 percent, respectively.

Of the nearly 100GW of additional electricity the US is expected to need during peak periods by 2030, about half will be used by data centers, according to the Department of Energy.

In Illinois, Deppert says rising electricity prices are eating into farmers’ margins. “Everything we do has a lot of energy,” he says. “If the money keeps going up, then it’s going to hit the bottom.”

Tech giants have tried to allay such fears, committing last month to “build, deliver, or buy new generations of data centers and pay the full cost of infrastructure upgrades needed to support their operations.”

Increasingly, however, popular resistance is having an effect. Amazon was forced to abandon a data center project in Tucson, Arizona, after concerns about water and energy use, while Microsoft was sued in Caledonia, Wisconsin, over similar concerns.

Small towns across the US also questioned the economic benefits the industry promised. “Tech companies talk about speed,” says Jonathan Koomey, a former Berkeley Lab project scientist. This is because they are in an arms race. “Is there a rush for people?

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