Tech companies have underestimated the opposition to energy-hungry datacenters – and experts predict the pushback will intensify

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, listening to Dolly Parton in the wake of her death. I was lucky enough to see her in concert a decade ago in California, in the same arena where Google now hosts its annual I/O conference. It’s been a long time, and all my iPhone 4 photos are so blurry you can barely tell it’s a musical performance, but my memory is clear enough to compensate. She told many stories about her childhood, which led into a trio of fabulous songs: My Tennessee Mountain Home, Applejack and Dr Robert F Thomas. They’re still my favorites.

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The datacenter backlash is bringing the entire political spectrum together – against big tech billionaires

Three-quarters of Americans said in a recent poll that they oppose datacenters being built next to their homes

Donald Trump has criticized communities pushing back against datacenter projects across the US amid a growing backlash, warning those that reject them risk becoming “backwards and poor”.

As controversy surrounding local datacenter plans continues to swirl around election campaigns nationwide ahead of November’s midterm elections, the US president declared Americans “will only have yourselves to blame” if they are canceled.

The movement against datacenters is uniting Americans because they perfectly illustrate how a few individuals hold all the power to control decisions that affect our lives

Bryce Gustafson has been knocking on doors in Indiana for more than a decade. The lead organizer with Citizens Action Coalition (CAC), a consumer and environmental organization, he usually encounters a mix of reactions when he’s out canvassing; whatever issue he’s talking about, there’s always at least a few people on the other side. But at a recent festival in the rural town of Monrovia, Indiana, he was struck by an unusual spirit of unity.

He was there about a proposed datacenter, a 550-acre (222-hectare) Google project in this small town of 1,600 people. “I had 50 people I talked to,” Gustafson told me. “Nobody wanted that datacenter in their community. And at least a half a dozen people came up to me to say, ‘Hey, I voted for Trump. What the heck’s he doing, supporting these things?’”

In this week’s newsletter: Anti-datacentre sentiment is growing across the political spectrum in the US – and the public is only just finding out about the potential effects on their energy bills

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Anti-datacentre sentiment is growing from across the political spectrum in the US.

More than a dozen states have considered moratoria on datacentres. New York became the first US state to enact a temporary ban last month. Progressive stalwarts Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have proposed a national moratorium. And even Greg Abbott, the far-right governor of Texas, called for a ban on datacentre development in rural swaths of his state.

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