We're Not Having the Right Conversation About Data Centers and AI

Why the fight over data centers needs less all-or-nothing and more all, with something greater built in.

The confession nobody wants to make

The most vocal critics of data center expansion are, overwhelmingly, people who use AI every day. That’s not a gotcha. It’s just the reality.

Whether we admit it or not, AI integration is now one of those unavoidable realities of keeping pace with the times. And if you work anywhere near climate, you’re probably being a little less than honest about that, or lying by omission, about how AI has slipped into our daily lives the same way the internet, smartphones, Uber, matcha lattes, Pilates, and Gel X nails did. Without asking permission. Becoming status quo before we noticed.

The only thing that’s actually changed is our honesty about it.

I know this because I was recently invited to an event on the rooftop of a posh townhouse in Manhattan’s Flatiron district, alongside twenty or so well-heeled creators with established platforms, people who speak truth to power in their respective niches. Off the record, more than one admitted that talking openly about AI could get them cancelled. But they’re using it. And they feel some type of way about that.

We all do. That’s real. The same way we feel some type of way about the labor behind our clothes and smartphones, or the migrant workers who source our food while facing discrimination, thin safety nets, and the threat of deportation. In short, there’s no clean way to opt out of the systems we live inside. But there are ways to re-think how we define solutions and disruption when the system itself can’t be changed quickly, but can be reshaped with externalities that optimistically render the original method antiquated. I saw this firsthand during my time as a marketing manager in the early days of Uber in Charlotte, where ridesharing single-handedly forced updated transportation legislation and moved traditional solutions to improve services and technology.

What a year of reporting taught me

I’ve spent the last year studying this conversation from every angle, connecting with policymakers, technologists, and utility folks to understand where the real leverage points are.

That research became a four-part series, The Cloud Has an Address, which traces the interconnectedness of AI infrastructure, the communities living in its shadow, and the uncomfortable truth underneath all of it: regulation is not going to catch up with expansion.

I spoke to Dr. Sacoby Wilson, a researcher at the University of Maryland who studies the environmental health impacts of infrastructure like this on the communities nearest to it. Then I spoke withSarah Houston, a community organizer in Memphis who’s watched what happens when a data center lands in a neighborhood without anyone asking permission first. Then, I interviewed Asim Z. Haque, Senior Vice President of Governmental and Member Services at PJM Interconnection, who sees the grid strain from the inside. And finally, I talked to New York State Senator Kristen Gonzalez, who chairs the Senate’s Internet and Technology Committee and sponsored the Responsible Data Center Development Act, the legislation behind New York’s new one year moratorium on hyper-scale data center permits. Signed this month, it’s the first statewide moratorium of its kind in the country.

Four very different vantage points but holding the same underlying warning about what’s ahead. Awareness helps, but what we’re facing must be clearly defined as we’re headed toward an unprecedented surge in power demand over the coming months, one that will hit our utility bills gravely, and most of us won’t even understand why.

So what do we do with that?

Where the leverage actually is

We get focused. Specifically, on what it looks like to pressure representatives, federally and locally, into building processes that actually work: better infrastructure, faster permitting, and real pathways for smaller companies and scalable renewables to connect to the grid. That’s how we get cleaner alternatives to meet the power demand that’s coming whether we’re ready or not.

The solutions already exist. What’s missing is political will and the policy infrastructure to match it. So here’s the conversation I think we should be having instead: look at your local laws. Find out where you don’t currently have the right to request renewables. Get informed. Push your local government to invest in smarter grids.

The data centers are happening. We’re competing globally, and the current administration hasn’t offered a clear vision for protecting our country’s energy security beyond fossil fuels. But the answer can’t be all or nothing. It can be all, with something far greater built into the alternative.

A purple problem, not a partisan one

This week I listened to a podcast episode from Politico Energy that I highly recommend adding to your rotation, featuring Tim Pawlenty, former republican governor of Minnesota, and recent in-coming president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association. Pawlenty argues that the case for cleaner energy issue needs to be purple, not partisan. It’s a compelling reframe. The assumption is always that Republicans are drill-baby-drill and Democrats are environment-only. But energy security is a language of shared understanding. It skips the jargon. It leaves room for innovation and capability on both sides. At least that’s what I’m learning.

What if we pivoted? What if the solution isn’t just fighting?

I want good, solid innovation in this next iteration of energy infrastructure. I also want clean water and protected communities. So where’s the smarter middle: the storage, the grid design, the environmental handling, that gets us both?

A baseline, not a battle

During my recent visit to a General Motors press event in San Francisco, one thing became clear: the grid can’t handle what’s coming. We’re going to see more outages. But electric vehicles, across their lifecycle, can double as power sources for homes when the grid goes down. A potential lifeline while utilities repair the system, not a replacement for fixing it.

Last month, the company announced bidirectional charging across all of its electric vehicles, both existing and those in production.

There’s a version of this that doesn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. That doesn’t undermine Indigenous tribes or burn more fossil fuels to get there. A cleaner baseline is possible.

Companies like Microsoft are in pilot launches with vendors building new data centers with bio-steel, recycled, low-emissions concrete, and rooftop green spaces to reduce emissions at large. The company also committed that all new data centers from August 2024 onward would use zero-water based cooling via a closed-loop liquid system, estimated to save up to 125 million liters of water per data center annually.

I still believe these projects should move forward, and that transparency on build-out, community impact, and economic tradeoffs should be non-negotiable conditions of that approval. Both things are true. We can keep building, and we can build smarter.

The question I keep coming back to: what would it take for energy security to become the shared language instead of the dividing line?