Human Intelligence for Siting Data Centers

By Merrick Hoben and Patrick Field

Data centers—for cloud storage and, increasingly, AI—make our digital world possible. Email, social media, our healthcare system, finance, streaming entertainment: these all require networked servers housed in colossal warehouses. But those centers come at a cost. They consume massive amounts of energy (100 MW or more), increasing load forecasts substantially for the first time in decades, and they use vast quantities of water for cooling (millions of gallons a day). Now, during the AI boom, it’s estimated that globally around “100 GW of new data centers will be added between 2026 and 2030, doubling global capacity.” This explosive growth will intensify data centers’ environmental effects and pressures on local infrastructure. Local concern about these impacts has already sparked community opposition; as the AP reports, the industry has experienced “a sharp escalation in community, political and regulatory disruptions to data center development.”

CBI has for decades worked on siting disputes, especially in the energy sector, revolving around similar imbalances between a facility’s wider benefits and its local impacts. The development of on- and off-shore wind and solar energy facilities has prompted conflict with affected communities due to the sites’ impact on surrounding areas—including changes to local landscape, loss of farmland, interference with traditional ocean uses, and effects on wildlife and ecosystems. These dynamics are familiar. What is new in the data center context is the degree of opacity surrounding the facilities themselves—and the speed at which they are being proposed and approved.

Why Data Centers Feel Different

Unlike wind turbines and solar facilities, data centers are often visually and operationally opaque. The sight of enormous, windowless warehouses—creating few jobs once construction is complete, mysteriously powering AI or cloud storage for who knows what—creates worry and outright fear. Fear is expressed in statements like “These facilities are driving up our electricity bills” and “We could run out of water.” Concerns also have been raised about construction effects, taxes for the local government, and visual impacts.

This combination of high impact and opacity creates fertile ground for mistrust. Communities may struggle to understand:

• how much water will actually be used and when;
• whether local infrastructure can support the load;
• what benefits will accrue locally versus regionally or globally; and
• how decisions will be made about where the centers go, how they are constructed, and who watches over them for impacts not foreseen.

Too often, siting processes default to zoning hearings, public comment periods, and one-way “public information” sessions. These forums are necessary, but rarely sufficient. When people feel they are being informed rather than engaged, sold to rather than enlisted, especially on issues that affect them suddenly and materially, frustration escalates. Opposition hardens not because communities are anti-technology, but because the tradeoffs feel unclear, the benefits feel distant, and the process feels disempowering. 

In anticipation of community pushback, the strategies below can help move potential and actual disputes toward more productive dialogue and outcomes for both data center developers and communities. 

Four Strategies for Better Data Center Siting Processes

CBI’s experience across infrastructure sectors suggests that, in tough siting disputes, better outcomes emerge when engagement is designed around four core strategies: Acknowledgement, Agency, Reciprocity, and Clarity (AARC). These are practical ways of engaging that can withstand scrutiny and pressure. These four strategies all support and activate one another.

Acknowledgement means more than listening sessions. It requires openly recognizing community concerns—even when they are based on incomplete information and presented as firm opposition to the data center. Acknowledgement by the developer means naming legitimate fears about water scarcity, cumulative infrastructure impacts, and long-term lock-in effects, rather than dismissing them as misinformation. It also means being clearer about what these centers do and how they do it (notice, here, how the “clarity” and “acknowledgement” elements interrelate). It also means not overselling what kinds of employment and other benefits for locals these facilities create.

Agency is about influence, not veto power. While local governments do have jurisdiction over siting, residents want at least to be able to shape and influence siting decisions, to feel respected, to protect their homes and businesses, and to maintain their values. They need clear, credible opportunities to shape outcomes—such as conditions on site location, construction activities, roads, traffic, noise, lighting, fencing/shielding, and local benefits.

Reciprocity asks a harder question: what is the exchange? Communities often perceive that data centers extract local resources—land, water, power—while benefits flow to the virtual world beyond. Reciprocal approaches make the give-and-get explicit, whether through transparent tax arrangements, infrastructure upgrades, workforce development, or other co-designed community benefits tied to the project’s actual impacts. Once again, clarity must be threaded through it all: for this reciprocity to work, it needs to be demonstrated plainly.

Clarity matters so much because conflict thrives where roles, decision pathways, activities, purposes, and constraints are unclear. Lucid explanations of what these facilities are and do, who decides what, what is fixed versus flexible, how concerns will be addressed over time, and how performance will be tracked can reduce anxiety even when outcomes are imperfect. Transparency alone—dumping reports online—is not enough. What matters is whether people can understand how the system works.

The lesson from this era of data center disputes is not that engagement has failed, but that traditional engagement tools are being used for work they were never designed to do, at a time when trust in public decision-making is very low. When acknowledgment, agency, reciprocity, and clarity are absent, opposition often becomes the only tool communities have to regain a sense of control. When these four elements are built into processes from the outset, projects are more likely to move forward with legitimacy—even in contentious environments.