Data centers, rising energy costs, and a mounting bipartisan revolt ahead of 2026
Georgia voters handed a surprise when Democrat Peter Hubbard won a seat on the Public Service Commission, the first Democrat to claim statewide office in Georgia in nearly twenty years. Hubbard ran explicitly on two linked concerns: rising utility costs and the rapid spread of data centers. “The number one issue was affordability,” Hubbard said; “But a very close second was data centers and the concern around them just sucking up the water, the electricity, the land – and not really paying any taxes.”
Mesa, Arizona, has become a case study in rapid build-out. The city now hosts at least 15 major facilities covering about 1,500 acres and roughly 15 million square feet under roof, with more on the way. The local political leadership is overwhelmingly Republican, yet the infrastructure boom there is reshaping public sentiment.
- Meta (Facebook): Meta’s campus covers 396 acres in southeast Mesa, with five buildings totaling more than 2.5 million square feet of data center and support space.
- Novva: Novva’s $3 billion campus spans 159–160 acres, includes five data halls and about 1.1–1.3 million square feet of data hall and office space, and plans a total power capacity of 300 MW.
- EdgeCore: EdgeCore is expanding from 40 acres to another 43.87 acres, eventually supporting over 450 MW across 83.87 acres.
- Apple: Apple operates a 1.3 million-square-foot data center on a campus at Signal Butte and Elliot roads.
- Edged Energy: Edged Energy is building a 12-acre site near Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport, with a 210,000-square-foot campus focused on high-density AI workloads.
A new Google facility is being built about three miles from the author’s home on 187 acres of former farmland, planned to have 750,000 square feet under roof and consume 430 Megawatts of power. Mesa’s data center power use already eclipses the city’s non-data-center consumption, concentrating digital infrastructure in the Southwest. Meta is the largest operator there but employs only about 200 full-time staff in Arizona, and all the town’s data centers combined will likely never exceed 2,500 full-time employees.
Public pushback is crystallizing into political action. A Data Center Watch report documented a sharp escalation in community resistance, noting that between March and June of 2025 local opposition either blocked or delayed $98 billion in data-center projects, surpassing $64 billion tracked earlier. “This was a sharp escalation,” the report concludes, with eight projects fully blocked and nine delayed in just three months, including two blocked projects in Indiana and Kentucky and a paused $17 billion suburban Atlanta proposal after a 180-day moratorium.
Report author Miquel Vila said the findings point to a broader shift in public sentiment, though he flagged methodological caveats. He noted nearly 50,000 signatures opposing specific data centers were submitted in the March–June window alone and described the moment as “a turning point.”
“Before, [resistance] was something that could happen,” Vila said. “Now it seems that it’s very likely that when you are developing [a data center], potentially someone is going to organize.”
Rising electricity use ties these fights together. In Virginia, Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger campaigned saying she wanted data centers to “pay their own way” for power, reflecting homeowner and consumer anger about bills tied to new load. Democratic Del. Josh Thomas said data-center sprawl dominated his latest campaign and that he has pushed bills to rein in development.
Thomas highlighted a high-profile dispute over the Prince William Digital Gateway, a proposed cluster of more than 30 data centers near a national reserve, where residents and a judge temporarily halted approvals. “The little guy finally won,” Thomas said, referring to the rare victory against major tech projects, and added that the case galvanized voters.
Resistance is crossing partisan lines and drawing Republican critics as well as Democrats. National figures such as Sen. Josh Hawley and Reps. Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene have criticized unchecked builds, while local voters in red and purple areas have also pushed back. Greene warned on X: “People you have got to pay close attention to your local city, county, and state approvals of data centers and demand your water and energy bills be protected!!!”
Industry groups emphasize economic benefits and continued engagement. Dan Diorio of the Data Center Coalition said the sector still sees “significant interest” from communities and pledged “continued community engagement and stakeholder education,” calling members “responsible and responsive neighbors.” He added that data centers supported 4.7 million jobs in 2023 and contributed $162 billion in federal, state, and local taxes that fund public services.
At the same time, tech capital plans dwarf what has been stalled: Meta announced plans to invest $600 billion over the next three years in AI infrastructure, far outstripping the $93 billion in investments Data Center Watch says were disrupted this year. Lawmakers are responding, and proposals to tighten siting rules are being drafted in multiple states ahead of the 2026 cycle.
“I have Republicans and Democrats coming to me saying, ‘How can we help with this issue?’ My constituents are talking about it like they never have before,” Thomas said. “Our coalition of data center reform-minded legislators has just grown to a very large number.”