Data & Society fieldwork in Pennsylvania puts power bills at the front of data center opposition

Forty-four interviews in one state is a narrow base. The authors are explicit that they were not measuring the empirical impact of data centers at all. They wanted to understand how people experience the argument over building them ^[5][6]. So the report cannot tell a developer whether a particular campus will move local electricity rates. What it records is which objections residents reach for, and the researchers say material ones are often top of mind: power bills and property values ^[17].

The people carrying those objections do not fit one profile. The fieldwork found classic NIMBYs, people who object to AI and the corporate interests behind it, environmental groups focused on water usage and energy-related emissions, and residents with looser public health concerns ^[16]. Livia Garofalo, a Data & Society researcher, told TechCrunch that "one of the strengths of ethnography and doing research on the ground for an extended period of time is piercing the bubble of AI hype" ^[7]. Maia Woluchem, a program director who co-authored the report, said: "People in Pennsylvania especially have incredible experience with industrial change, have deep lineages of industrial trauma, enough to sniff when things don't feel right to them" ^[11]. The report says the industry's message that AI is inevitable has landed poorly against that history of coal, oil, steel and fracking ^[10].

State politics moved with it. Governor Josh Shapiro headlined a July 2025 summit celebrating $90 billion in data center and AI infrastructure investment. A year later he signed an order imposing new requirements on data center projects and removing them from a regulatory fast-track initiative ^[9].

The booster spending that is on the record is small. The researchers point to the Data Center Coalition, a trade group running sites such as "Pennsylvania Connects", which spent at least $19,000 lobbying the state government last year. They describe that work as a kind of propaganda campaign ^[13]. Set against the summit's own headline figure, that is about $4.7 million of announced investment for every disclosed lobbying dollar ^[18]. The $19,000 is a floor, and disclosed lobbying is not the same as the website and coalition work the report describes. TechCrunch writes that the industry's competing explanation, secretive Chinese meddling, does not pass the smell test ^[4].

The steadiest local support comes from trade unions. They back the projects for the construction jobs, even while acknowledging that a finished data center is not a major employer. The report says unions treat the projects as a lifeline to rebuild their ranks ^[12].

For anyone sorting expected objections before a first hearing: can a term sheet answer it, and does it show up on a household bill? A host agreement can move grid cost allocation, water sourcing and tax terms. It cannot touch property values or a township's memory of fracking, and the fieldwork suggests those are the ones that bring strangers to the same meeting. The researchers said they were surprised by the diversity of the opposition, calling it not bipartisan but post-partisan ^[14]. Woluchem said "these fights are incredibly organic" ^[15].