Power the Future, a pro-energy advocacy group, is asking Congress to take a closer look at the opposition to data centers that is springing up across the country.
In a letter to Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., the group asked lawmakers to open formal investigations into millions of dollars in funding they believe is incentivizing nonprofits and local groups to take up an environmental stance against data centers.
In their view, it’s a movement that’s trying to look more grassroots than it actually is.
“We request that your committees open a formal investigation into a coordinated, billionaire-funded, and potentially foreign-backed political campaign designed to block the construction of data center and AI infrastructure across the United States, which sits among the most important economic and national-security buildouts of President Trump’s second term,” the letter reads.
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The letter highlights fears that American laws surrounding nonprofits, which shield donors from public disclosures, could be enabling wealthy ideologues to make donations that are difficult to track.
The group pointed to environmentally-minded nonprofits like the Sierra Club, Food and Water Watch, Earthjustice, Goods Jobs First, Piedmont Environmental Council, the Southern Environmental Law Center, MediaJustice and the Athena Coalition that have received — and spent millions — opposing their expansion.
New Venture Fund, the Sierra Club Foundation and the Sixteen Thirty Fund collectively received over $13 million from pro-environmental donors, according to grant reporting.
It’s unclear if those donations were made for the express intent of opposing data center constructions.
Even so, across the board, the groups affirm that data centers are costing more resources than they are worth — at the expense of local communities’ environmental wellbeing.
Power the Future disagrees.
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Beyond generating tax revenue for local communities and creating employment opportunities, Power the Future argued that the data centers enable the U.S. to stay competitive with foreign powers.
“Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has called opposition to that buildout a ‘surrender’ to China,” Power the Future wrote in its datacenter report.
“The compute infrastructure that trains AI models, processes intelligence data and powers the next generation of American economic and military advantage has to be built somewhere.”
Although the group’s founder, Daniel Turner, believes that part of the opposition may well come from legitimate local concerns about unwanted development in rural areas, he’s skeptical of the money being pumped into the picture.
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“There is certainly a lot for communities to discuss around data centers. But is it a paid operation by radical green groups who see banning data centers as the new banning the gas stove or banning the leaf blower?” Turner said in a statement to Fox News Digital.
Power the Future has found 188 local opposition groups across 24 states that oppose data center expansion, according to their research.