The rise of artificial intelligence and cloud computing is driving a buildout of data centers but the issue has grown contentious in North Carolina and across the country.

The Tar Heel State is already home to nearly 100 data centers and more are planned. Companies like Amazon, Apple and Microsoft have announced billions of dollars in investments in data center developments or expansions. But community groups are pushing back in many areas.

Jean Hardy, assistant professor of media and information at Michigan State University, said data centers bring up three main issues: water, power and land use, along with discussion about whether there might be upsides for communities.

"That would include what are community benefits going to be? What are economic benefits going to be?" Hardy outlined. "A lot of communities were not proactively thinking, ‘What are data centers? Could they come to our communities?’ They didn’t have anything in place to understand how data centers would fit into their communities from a planning and zoning perspective."

A report by the climate news provider Heatmap found a sharp rise in canceled data center projects over the last year, driven largely by community opposition. Chatham and Gates counties are the first two in North Carolina to enact a one-year moratorium on data center development, so county leaders have time to work on zoning rules.

Hardy argued data centers are an important piece of the digital age and some communities have made agreements to pump money into local developments, schools and public services. But he pointed out job creation from data centers is often limited and the positions do not necessarily go to local residents.

"Data centers do provide a lot of construction jobs, so that can be a benefit," Hardy noted. "But data center construction jobs are temporary, right? And we know that for these large-scale development projects, the types of construction companies that do these things usually aren’t local."

Source: Public News Service