Pennsylvania's rush to build massive artificial intelligence data centers is following a familiar playbook: promising economic revival while repeating a long history of industrial facilities exploiting the communities that host them. A new report from the research group Data & Society, released Tuesday, found little evidence that the industry will deliver the job growth it promises, and warns that the state's 66 planned data centers could consume enormous quantities of land, water, and energy while concentrating wealth among distant corporations.

The two-year investigation examined the material, social, and political impacts of Pennsylvania's data center industry by consulting developers, attending industry conferences, interviewing academic experts, and gathering input from community members. Of the 66 potential data centers tracked by the independent Data Center Proposal Tracker, five are currently under construction and another five have been approved.

What Makes Pennsylvania's Data Center Expansion Different From Past Industrial Booms?

The report identifies a troubling pattern: the AI industry uses "industrial nostalgia, nationalist fervor and union pride" to mask what researchers call a "power grab" that echoes earlier waves of industrial development, most recently the natural gas boom of the 2000s. The state's existing infrastructure and "residual assets" from previous industrial eras make it especially attractive to data center developers, but also leave communities vulnerable to repeating past mistakes.

Lead author Maia Woluchem explained the emotional weight this carries for Pennsylvanians who have endured generations of industrial harm. "There are lots and lots of reasons for folks to feel upset, and reflect on these generations of theft, and they feel taken for granted," she stated. "So the data center becomes this symbol of larger remote systems, of inequality, of distrust, and really an instrument of power that folks are aiming to take back".

"There are lots and lots of reasons for folks to feel upset, and reflect on these generations of theft, and they feel taken for granted. So the data center becomes this symbol of larger remote systems, of inequality, of distrust, and really an instrument of power that folks are aiming to take back," said Maia Woluchem, lead author of the Data & Society report.

Maia Woluchem, Lead Author, Data & Society

The concerns extend beyond nostalgia and economics. Some communities worry that the enormous power demands needed to run data centers will worsen climate change, while others fear threats to public health or local democracy when developers fail to keep residents fully informed about their plans.

How Are Communities Fighting Back Against Data Center Projects?

• Legal Victories: Citizens of Montour County won a rare victory in February when county leaders denied a rezoning application that would have allowed a data center to be built on farmland, demonstrating that data centers are not inevitable despite industry claims.
• Broad Coalition Building: Opposition to data centers spans environmental and social concerns and crosses party lines, making it a more unified movement than resistance to fracking, according to Sam Burleigh, president of Citizens of Montour County.
• Legislative Action: State Senator Katie Muth, a Democrat, introduced a bill this year that would impose a three-year moratorium on data center development, giving lawmakers time to consider protective measures.
• Public Polling: According to David Masur, executive director of PennEnvironment, polling shows the public is "overwhelmingly concerned about the proliferation of data centers as well as the harms posed by AI writ large".

The strength of public opposition has turned data centers into a political issue ahead of November's midterm elections for Congress and state legislatures. Masur argued that this "one-two punch" of environmental and AI concerns is pushing Americans to demand swift action from elected officials.

David Hess, a former secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, predicted that environmental and community activism will influence the fall elections. "Environmental and community activism is on the upswing and building and politicians at all levels of government better pay attention or risk losing their jobs," he wrote. "People are fed-up being stomped on and ignored and in Pennsylvania we've been stomped on by the best, the coal industry, oil and gas industry, the timber industry and railroads for 175 years".

What Do Industry Supporters Say About Data Center Energy Demands?

The Pennsylvania chapter of the American Petroleum Institute has dismissed environmental criticism, arguing that natural gas is essential for powering the AI era. "Energy is the foundation of our modern economy, from the days of the Industrial Revolution to the invention of the internet and now the AI era, pushing power demand to new heights," said Stephanie Catarino Wissman, executive director of the chapter. "Pennsylvania's abundant natural gas can help address the load growth challenge and provide reliable baseload power while reducing carbon dioxide emissions".

President Donald Trump and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro promoted the economic potential of data centers at the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit at Carnegie Mellon University in July 2025, with Trump claiming private industry would invest $40 billion in data centers and another $50 billion in the energy infrastructure needed to fuel them. However, protesters at the event argued that these claims ignored scientific warnings that increased natural gas production would worsen climate change by adding greenhouse gases.

How Is AI Being Used to Understand Climate Change Impacts?

While Pennsylvania debates data center expansion, researchers elsewhere are using artificial intelligence to better understand how recent emissions are intensifying extreme weather. A new study published September 22 in Geophysical Research Letters found strong evidence that greenhouse gases emitted since the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement have intensified Europe's recent heat waves.

Researchers at Stanford University trained a type of generative AI called a diffusion model using simulated weather data from 10 global climate models. The model learned how surface temperatures over Europe vary with different emission levels and weather conditions such as atmospheric pressure and soil moisture. By analyzing data from 1850 to 2100, the researchers could predict how specific heat waves would have differed under lower emission scenarios.

"We found strong evidence that if Europe's heat wave in the summer of 2025 had occurred without the emissions since 2015, it very likely would have been cooler. That result is not unique to the 2025 heat wave, but also true for Europe's hottest week in every individual year since at least 2021," explained Jared Trok, a PhD student in Earth system science at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.

Jared Trok, PhD Student in Earth System Science, Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability

The findings are striking: the odds are more than 99 in 100 that emissions during the past decade intensified Europe's deadly June 2025 heat wave. Researchers estimated that post-2015 emissions increased average daily temperatures in some regions by roughly one-third of a degree Celsius, or just over half a degree Fahrenheit.

While that temperature increase may seem small, previous research shows that even modest changes in temperature can have meaningful impacts on heat-related deaths, electricity demand, agricultural yields, and labor productivity. Almost one-fifth of all carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels have been released in the decade since the Paris Agreement was adopted, with most coming from oil, natural gas, and coal.

"Even in the most optimistic timelines for reducing emissions, there will still be more emissions in the future than there have been in the last decade since the Paris Agreement. This study highlights that we can expect the kinds of extreme heat waves we've been experiencing recently to intensify even more in the coming years," noted Noah Diffenbaugh, the William Wrigley Professor and Kimmelman Family Senior Fellow in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.

Noah Diffenbaugh, William Wrigley Professor, Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability

The Pennsylvania data center debate and the Stanford climate research illustrate a central tension in the AI era: the technology promises to help solve problems like climate prediction and energy optimization, yet the infrastructure required to power AI systems consumes vast amounts of energy and resources. As Pennsylvania communities weigh the promised economic benefits against environmental and social costs, the state's decision will likely influence how other regions approach similar data center proposals.