This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: The construction of new data centers is shaping up to be a defining issue in the 2026 midterm elections. Politicians in both parties have been distancing themselves from data centers in the face of public discontent around the issue, with public backlash leading to the freezing of dozens of data center projects nationwide this year.
Recently, government officials have considered multiple new ways to construct data centers, including building data centers on federal lands and trading parkland with developers for data center construction. In this Q&A, Hannah Wiseman, a professor at Penn State Dickinson Law and the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences who specializes in land use regulation and energy law; and Derrick Taff, the Suzie and Allen Martin Professor of Recreation, Park, and Tourism Management and a former park ranger who studies the relationship between humans and wilderness areas, discuss potential issues associated with building data centers on federal land. Wiseman: Data centers are a bipartisan issue, in part because many of them are now being constructed in areas that have not experienced this type of development before.
The Pew Research Center has an interesting study showing that the majority of data centers are emerging in rural areas, and many of them are in counties that have no existing data center infrastructure. The "hyperscale" data center is a relatively new form of development. A data center is essentially a very large warehouse, but unlike many warehouses, it uses a lot of water and energy.
Hyperscale data centers are huge, with some occupying several thousand acres of land. Most people do things every day that require conventional data centers, such as streaming movies. But hyperscale data centers use approximately 100 megawatts of electricity or more, though definitions vary.
One of these centers uses the same amount of electricity daily that a medium- or large-sized city—around 80,000 houses or even 800,000 homes—would use daily. Hyperscale data centers primarily power technologies that are different from our typical daily use, like complex artificial intelligence (AI) models. Although these data centers are necessary infrastructure for AI, not all individuals use AI for complex tasks on a daily basis.
Many of these AI models are designed for very sophisticated business uses, so some communities are asking, "Hey, wait a minute, do we really need this hyperscale AI data center?" Residents are starting to see how this could change their communities. They are speaking with their state leaders, which is why we're seeing a pause on all new data centers in states like Texas and a new executive order from Gov. Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania placing more requirements on data center construction.
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