La oposición a los centros de datos se acelera: se bloquean 98 mil millones de dólares en proyectos de IA en tres meses

Data Center Watch, a research project of the AI intelligence firm 10a Labs, found that opposition from residents and local officials blocked or delayed 20 data center projects worth $98 billion between late March and June 2025. That single quarter topped the $64 billion the group had tracked across the previous two years combined. NBC News reported the findings on November 14, 2025.

The group recorded a 125% surge in data center opposition during the second quarter of 2025. Of the 30 projects that organized groups protested, two out of three ended up blocked or delayed.

The fight is mostly about electricity bills. Wholesale power in areas near data centers cost as much as 267% more in a single month than it did five years earlier, according to a September 2025 Bloomberg analysis of tens of thousands of pricing locations. About 75% of the sites with the steepest increases sat within 50 miles of a dense cluster of data centers, and utilities pass those wholesale costs on to households.

A July 2025 study from the Open Energy Outlook Initiative, run by Carnegie Mellon University and North Carolina State University, projected that data center and cryptocurrency growth could raise average U.S. electricity generation costs 8% by 2030, and more than 25% in Central and Northern Virginia. The same researchers noted that capacity prices in PJM, the nation's largest grid, jumped ninefold to $270 per megawatt-day in a December 2024 auction, raising bills for 67 million customers across 13 states.

Most data center decisions happen at the local level, where county commissions and city councils control zoning and permits. That gives residents a direct lever a supportive White House cannot override. Where communities once fought factories or warehouses, they now organize against server farms over noise, water use, farmland loss, and power demand.

Virginia shows where the fight began. Northern Virginia hosts the world's largest concentration of data centers, and by early 2025 the state had 42 activist groups, more than any other. In December 2024, the state watchdog JLARC warned that unchecked growth could add as much as $18 billion to Virginia's generation and transmission costs by 2040, with residential customers sharing the bill.

The backlash crosses party lines. Among officials who took public positions against large projects, Data Center Watch found 55% were Republicans and 45% Democrats. Republicans tend to attack tax abatements and grid strain while Democrats emphasize water and environmental costs, but anger over rising power bills now spans the spectrum.

In an October 2025 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Microsoft told investors it faces "community opposition, local moratoriums and hyper-local dissent" that could delay its buildout. Days earlier, Microsoft had scrapped a data center planned for Caledonia, Wisconsin, after about 40 residents lined up to oppose it at a village plan commission meeting.

Indiana became a center of the revolt. Bryce Gustafson of the Citizens Action Coalition counted more than a dozen Indiana projects that lost rezoning votes, telling the Associated Press it was the biggest local pushback he had seen in 16 years of organizing.

States started reaching for new tools in 2025. California lawmakers tried to make data centers report energy use, but the bill was cut to a study due by January 2027 after industry lobbying, and Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a separate measure by Assemblymember Diane Papan that would have required disclosure of water use. In Minnesota, Amazon paused a data center in Becker after lawmakers moved to trim its tax breaks.

Weeks after the report, the fight reached Congress. In December 2025, Senators Elizabeth Warren, Chris Van Hollen, and Richard Blumenthal opened an investigation into seven companies, including Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft, arguing that families "bankroll the electricity costs of trillion dollar tech companies." The utility Indiana Michigan Power had estimated it would spend $17 billion to serve regional data center demand.

The industry rejects the blame. Josh Levi, president of the Data Center Coalition, said members are committed to paying the full cost of service for the energy they use, and Energy Secretary Chris Wright argued data centers are "not" the cause of rising prices, pointing to earlier energy policies instead.