Lauren Keeler

Well, I'm here in Arizona, and we've seen organized opposition, most prominently to Project Blue in Tucson.

There have been opposition to data centers proposed in Louisiana.

Virginia is where we've got a very large cluster, but we're even seeing opposition there.

Opposition's mounted in Illinois.

There's really been a push to expand data center infrastructure nationwide in response to expanding use of AI.

And as that expansion continues, opposition grows.

And what's driving the opposition?

I think most of the opposition is directly related to these very large, very energy and resource-intensive infrastructure projects right next door to people's homes.

I think...

Folks are rightly not convinced that the presence of data centers in your community directly benefits community members.

And they're aware of some of the negative impacts now that data centers have grown in their quantity and people are talking about it.

So they can be noisy.

They're very large.

Folks are concerned about their utility rates going up.

All of those are giving people pause and, you know, inviting the question, why would we want this?

Not directly.

So the greatest jobs associated with data centers is going to be in their construction.

For a very large data center, you could see 1,000 jobs associated with the construction of data centers.

But when that data center is done being constructed and it's in operation, you're going to have dozens of jobs, maybe 100.

And so the jobs are not commensurate with the resource impact.