#datacenterresistance — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #datacenterresistance, aggregated by home.social.
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‘Never seen this level of objection’: #Scotland pushes back against #datacentre boom
#Holyrood ‘inching towards moratorium’ amid concerns over massive proposed developments in #Auchtertool and beyond
by Aisha Down, 25 Aug 2026
"In a village 21 miles north of #Edinburgh, a real estate consultancy plans to build a datacentre larger than the village itself – 35 metres high, with an area larger than 100 football pitches.
"Billed as the second-biggest datacentre in the world, the development in Auchertool, Fife, has attracted 1,600 objections.
" 'The public pressure is huge,' said David Torrance, a member of the Scottish parliament representing the village. 'I’ve never seen this level of objection to a local plan, and I have been in politics for 25 years.'
"Similar concerns are being echoed across Scotland, next to gargantuan planned developments in towns such as #Airdrie and #Larbert. In a matter of weeks, as the Scottish parliament comes back into session, the growing opposition could pose a challenge to #Britain ’s #AI strategy.
" 'The Scottish government is inching towards a moratorium,' said Kat Jones, director of the Edinburgh-based charity #ActionToProtectRuralScotland. 'MSPs return to parliament next week, after a summer in their constituencies where they have been hearing the concerns of local people about proposed #hyperscale #datacentres. They will be expecting action.'
"For months, #UK officials have been encouraging would-be datacentre developers to consider Scotland. In April, Fintan Slye, the chief executive of the UK’s National Energy System Operator (Neso), told a London audience to look north: 'If in the audience you have a big datacentre and you want to go to Scotland, please come talk to me, we will help you,' he said.
" 'They are coming up here because we are energy-rich, and we are water-rich, and England is in drought and the grid is struggling,' said Torrance.
"But Scotland, it turns out, isn’t having it. The proposal for Auchtertool is a behemoth: drawings show the 600MW datacentre towering over the village, dwarfing old stone houses and blocking the view of #fields and #forests.
" 'How can you possibly ask people to accept that?' Torrance said. 'You can see why the public is objecting.'
"Scotland has already started to take steps that could mean the Auchtertool datacentre – and dozens of others – may never be built."
#DatacentreMoratorium #DatacenterMoratorium #ScotlandResists #ResistanceIsFertile #Resistance #NoDatacenters #NoDatacentres #NoisePollution #LightPollution #ForestsAreLife #AISucks #AIDataCenters #UKPol #DatacenterResistance #DatacentreResistance
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We Mapped Rural #DataCenter Development – and Opposition. Here’s What We Found
Though the majority of data centers are located in urban or suburban areas, rural communities face unique challenges in the data center development landscape.
by Julia Tilton and Sarah Alexander Melotte June 29, 2026
Excerpt: "Though the majority of in-progress #datacenters are in metropolitan areas, our reporting and data analysis show that large data centers, characteristic of the current boom, represent outsized investments in rural areas. Smaller populations often mean smaller tax bases and fewer government officials, leaving rural communities with fewer resources to negotiate deals with developers or weather the tax revenue fallout after facility closures.
The Geography of the Data Center Boom
"The following map shows the number of data centers in both metropolitan and non-metropolitan, or rural, counties. As of June 2026, approximately 30 of the 529 data centers currently in operation are located in rural counties, representing about 6% of operating data centers. At the time of this analysis, 16 rural data centers were either recently approved or currently under construction, representing about 12% of all in-progress projects.
"The Daily Yonder uses a county-level definition of rural derived from the Office of Management and Budget (#OMB). All counties outside of a Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) are classified as rural for the purposes of this analysis.
Information on the locations of data centers comes from #FracTrackerAlliance, an organization providing the public with interactive tools to understand #oil, #gas, #petrochemical, and data center development across the country.
"While there are many other datasets out there tracking data center development, few of them are publicly accessible, making a complete analysis difficult. We chose #FracTracker because of the organization’s methods for obtaining data and the monthly frequency with which it updates the database. We saw that frequency as a key metric for tracking this fast-evolving issue. FracTracker obtains information from crowd sourcing, media announcements, partner datasets, and public records. While the organization is primarily focused on proposed data centers, it is slowly adding existing data centers to the database.
"That means that the data used in this analysis is preliminary. Because it is a work in progress, FracTracker encourages readers to share new and updated information about data centers in their own communities via a submission form."
#USDatacenterMap #BigOilAndGas #BigData #DatacenterResistance #USPol #RuralAreas #AISucks
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More #DataCenters coming to #Illinois as residents complain about #noise, #electric bills: What to know
Story by Jason Knowles, Maggie Green, February 17, 2026
"Data centers are moving in. They power everything from #StreamingServices to #ArtificialIntelligence, but critics say they are noisy and can jack up your #ElectricBills.
Now, the I-Team and ABC News are finding that more than 3,000 data centers are already operating nationwide, with at least 1,000 more planned. Some are in the #ChicagoIL area."
#NoisePollution #NoEnergyForAI #NoEnergyForDatacenters #BigData #TechBullies #AISucks #DatacenterResistance #WaterIsLife
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#Texans are demanding their local governments push pause on #DataCenters . Can they?
Texans from #WacoTX to #HarlingenTX are raising concerns over how much energy and water data centers are poised to use. Local officials, some enticed by a tax boon, say they have little power to stop the rush.
By Berenice Garcia and Sam Shaw, The Waco Bridge, Feb. 13, 2026
Excerpt: "From #AmarilloTX to Waco, #CollegeStationTX to Harlingen, Texans are raising concerns over the proliferation of data centers — and the tremendous amounts of water and energy they are poised to suck up.
"Seemingly overnight, these sprawling campuses of computer servers meant to store information from websites and power artificial intelligence are popping up all over the state.
Just this month, the largest proposed data center in the U.S. was approved in Pecos County. That follows the start of construction of a $500 billion data center on the outskirts of Abilene and a planned 5,800-acre project in the Texas Panhandle that will include the world’s “largest energy campus,” according to its backers.
Together with more modest proposals near Waco, and just outside of Harlingen, Texas is emerging as a contender to challenge Virginia’s dominance in data centers.
In many of these places, Texans are demanding local elected officials intervene."
Read more:
https://www.texastribune.org/2026/02/13/texas-data-centers-local-governments-power/#NoWaterForDatacenters #DatacenterResistance #NoWaterForAI #NoEnergyForAI #AISucks #WaterIsLife #USPol #TexasPol #ResistAI #ResistDatacenters
