Data center backlash echoes fossil-fuel politics
Plus: AI's oily emissions and Seattle lake energy 📸
Willie Nelson has become an unlikely barometer of America’s biggest infrastructure fights. He once protested the Keystone XL pipeline and fracking. Today, he’s fighting data centers.
Why it matters: The American icon’s latest cause underscores how the politics surrounding AI infrastructure are beginning to resemble the last decade’s fights over fossil fuels.
“The last thing we need is a loud, water thieving, light polluting, data center anywhere near our town (or any others for that matter),” Nelson told his more than one million Instagram followers recently.
Flashback: “For 29 years, corporations have continued to take the land away from the small family farmers, and this is what we’re here to fight against,” Nelson said during a 2014 Nebraska concert held to oppose the Keystone XL pipeline.
“We always listen to our Yoda,” joked Nebraskan activist Jane Kleeb, referring to Nelson.
A leader of Nebraska’s fight against the now-cancelled Keystone XL pipeline, today Kleeb is active in the largely decentralized opposition to AI infrastructure.
The big picture: Data centers represent one of the fastest-growing, most bipartisan infrastructure backlashes in years.
“We just want to make sure when these massive infrastructure projects are being built, that they’re not leaving harms in the communities that will live with them forever,” said Kleeb, who is co-founder of the nonprofit Bold Alliance and chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party.
How it works: The parallels between the fossil-fuel sector and data centers are striking.
Tech companies have been touting how essential data centers are to our lives, which echoes how fossil-fuel companies remind us we use oil and natural gas to move around.
Kleeb says many developers approach communities with a “tech bro” mentality that leaves residents feeling unheard.
What they’re saying: “You don’t get your social license to operate by telling everybody how they’re going to do better economically,” said Kevin Book, managing director at the nonpartisan research firm ClearView Energy Partners, whose clients include institutional investors and corporate leaders.
“You get it by listening to their concerns and helping them process emotions.”
Between the lines: Both fights are also proxies for larger fears: Data centers are to AI what fossil-fuel infrastructure is to climate change.
“What’s interesting is they are both linked to this other obvious threat to people,” said Michael Lazarus, senior scientist emeritus at the climate research group Stockholm Environment Institute. “Both are existential in their own way.”
Friction point: Tech companies often say a few unnamed “bad actors” give everyone a bad reputation on data centers.
“Pipeline companies used to say this too,” Kleeb said. “If that’s true, name them and put out a set of policy suggestions that you believe are the proper guardrails around data centers.”
The other side: That might be in the works, according to Dan Diorio, executive vice president of state policy and government affairs for the Data Center Coalition.
Go deeper: Read the full story in Axios.
🎙️ICYMI: I joined NPR’s 1A show recently to talk about data center politics. Listen here!
AI could help unlock more oil — and emissions
Move over, data centers. AI’s climate impact may extend well beyond the electricity it consumes.
Why it matters: A new peer-reviewed study finds AI could help produce more oil and natural gas — and produce a climate impact the authors argue could far outweigh the technology’s benefits for renewable energy.
Driving the news: The research, just published in a Nature journal, concludes AI’s role in boosting oil and gas production would outweigh its climate benefits from accelerating renewable energy, leading to a net increase in emissions under a range of scenarios.
The study is among the first to estimate how AI-driven gains in fossil fuel production could affect global emissions.
“Most assessments of AI’s climate impact are framed as a tradeoff between data center energy use and the emissions AI might help avoid through renewables and efficiency gains,” said Holly Alpine, co-author of the paper.
“What’s missing from that calculation entirely is the other side of the same ledger: the emissions enabled from using AI to make fossil fuel production cheaper and more profitable,” Alpine said.
Holly Alpine and Will Alpine, former Microsoft employees who founded the nonprofit initiative Enabled Emissions Campaign in 2024, co-led the study with researchers from Purdue University and an independent researcher.
How it works: AI can help oil companies find new resources and recover more from existing fields. It can also help renewable energy by improving forecasting and operations. The new study argues the fossil-fuel gains are likely to dominate.
By the numbers: The researchers estimate AI could add emissions equal to roughly 1% to 5% of the global energy sector’s 2024 emissions under the scenarios they modeled.
The study estimates those emissions would be roughly three to 13 times the International Energy Agency’s estimate of current data-center emissions.
The other side: A spokesperson for the American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry’s main trade group, disputed the idea that more energy and lower emissions are in conflict.
Go deeper: Read the full story in Axios.
Energy contrast on Seattle’s Lake Union
