Executive Summary

• Communities are pushing back against the tech sector and winning the war against AI data centres, especially in the US. But it won’t be long until the UK catches up.
• In the first three months of early 2026, anti-data centre groups disrupted 75 projects worth $130bn, which matches all of 2025 in just three months. New York, for example, is imposing the country’s first state-wide moratorium on data centres, which pauses state permitting for new hyperscale data centres.
• Thought leaders claim the ones building fast and innovating faster will “win” the AI race, but it’s really the ones who will learn to be good neighbours.

If you start to picture a quiet town, you think of a tight-knit community where everyone knows everyone, idyllic countryside, wonderful nature walks and local pubs and cafes. Now, plonk a huge, windowless, grey warehouse just down the road, which feels like it’s sucking the life out of the picturesque town, all the while it hums like a refrigerator.

For years, if you asked the public about the cloud, they’d often tell you that they envision invisible “clouds” floating in the sky, which is how tech companies were pitching data centres. But this is far from the truth and the general public is waking up to it. For everyday people in quiet towns, the reality is very grounded, with trucks rolling through dainty residential streets, local water stresses, electricity strain and 24/7 low-frequency hum (and not the hum of wildlife).

Data centres are the BBEB (big bad evil bottleneck)

Local communities are fighting back against data centre developments and planning and this will be the ultimate big bad evil bottleneck (BBEB for short). We’re seeing it start across the UK, especially in Brick Lane and Fife, but over in the US, it is rife. In the first three months of early 2026, anti-data centre groups disrupted 75 projects worth $130bn, which matches all of 2025 in just three months. The number of groups also doubled to 833 across 49 states and is still growing, which is a significant number. As the UK follows the US in terms of digital sectors, this severe disruption will likely spread too. The sheer amount of grassroots opposition has started to change and reshape the AI industry and whether they can build on the land. No one really thinks about where their internet comes from until there are plans to build a huge facility near their backyard.

Look at New York, for example, who are imposing the country’s first statewise moratorium on data centres, which pauses state permitting for new hyperscale data centres and directs regulators to create standards that address energy demand, water use, environmental impacts and other factors.

The old playbook is failing

The last decade has brought promises upon promises that aren’t cutting it anymore. Developers, when they move into a new county, promise a few dozen permanent jobs, promise local tax revenue for schools and they show up at council meetings with their glossy renders of clean buildings. This old playbook just doesn’t work anymore. Residents have caught on to the downsides of having a facility on their doorsteps and when comparing a 100-megawatt data centre that will only employ 20 to 30 full-time staff once operational, to a car factory that creates thousands of jobs, you can see that the benefits aren’t that great. Not only this, but the facility draws as much electricity as tens of thousands of homes. With the cost of living and power constraints, the local people would care more about their electricity bill going up rather than the news of the town getting a small tax kickback.

The real complaints

Take away politics for a moment and you will find that public opposition comes from three different issues, all of which are practical and physical problems.

• Noise: The very large air chillers and cooling towers emit a constant low-frequency hum, which can be compared to a jet engine idling a few miles away. This can ruin the sleep of hundreds of people.
• Water: Traditional cooling systems evaporate millions of gallons of water to prevent servers from overheating. During the summer, especially, this puts a lot of strain on local water supplies.
• Power: New, expensive power lines need to be built every time a new huge facility connects to the grid. These extra costs are usually passed on to local residents on monthly utility bills.

If tech companies want to keep building, they need a social license to operate

If operators want to keep building, they need to eradicate their top-down PR campaign strategy and get a social license to operate; in other words, making sure there are genuine community partnerships in place. This could take the form of heat reuse, piping waste heat into local district systems to warm schools, public pools and homes for free, and using a quiet-first design, which means investing upfront in liquid cooling or acoustic baffling instead of retrofitting noisy air coolers. Furthermore, doing direct energy investment, such as building dedicated solar or wind generation so they don’t have to compete with homes for grid power.

The boom of AI won’t be stopped anytime soon, but the landscape is changing in terms of where and how these facilities are built. And if developers keep being bad neighbours, they will quickly face the repercussions. Thought leaders claim the ones building fast and innovating faster will “win” the AI race, but it’s really the ones who will learn to be good neighbours.