The resistance of the data center has been reached

Thomas, who won re-election last week, points to local opposition to the Prince William Digital Gateway, which would put more than 30 data centers on the edge of a national reserve in the upstate. A group of property owners have challenged the project in court, and a judge in August overturned the zoning, which temporarily halted construction.

“The little guy finally won, something that rarely happens in any industry, let alone where the Magnificent Ten plays,” he says, referring to the biggest US tech companies. “I think it brought people together politically in Virginia.”

Thomas, like Hubbard, also says many of his constituents are concerned about how data centers will affect their electricity bills. “People are much more cost-conscious,” he says. Energy bills are “something that’s been held relatively flat for a couple of years,” Thomas says. But in Virginia, electrical load from data centers helps drive up utility bills, Thomas says.

Both Thomas and Hubbard are Democrats, but the Data Center Watch report emphasizes that opposition to data centers has been strictly bipartisan. And some national Republican politicians, including Sen. Josh Hawley, Rep. Thomas Massey, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green, have begun speaking out against them.

“People who need to pay attention to their local city, county and state data center approvals and protect their water and energy bills!!!” Greene, who has been critical of the data center expansion for months, posted on X on Nov. 7.

To date, major tech companies have made few public statements about backing off data center projects. While some, such as Meta, provide public information about their data centers, others in the industry rely heavily on non-disclosure agreements when building new data centers and provide communities with little information about the projects — including which tech companies may be involved.