Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) renewed his call for a national ban on data center construction this week, and it is being heeded in blue states such as Colorado, where Denver Mayor Mike Johnston announced just such a ban. With Democrats becoming more hostile to data center construction, Republicans have a huge opportunity to bring jobs, tax revenue, and increased electricity capacity to states they control.
In his statement before President Donald Trump’s State of the Union, Sanders praised Denver and warned of a “very real environmental impact” that data center construction was having on communities nationwide. It is true that data centers consume a lot of electricity, but data center construction does not have to mean higher electricity costs for surrounding communities if those communities build infrastructure to increase electricity generation and transmission capacity.
Trump mentioned this in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday: “Many Americans are also concerned that energy demand from AI data centers could unfairly drive up their electric utility bills. We’re telling the major tech companies that they have the obligation to provide for their own power needs. They can build their own power plants as part of their factory, so that no one’s prices will go up and in many cases, prices of electricity will go down for the community, and very substantially then.”
Trump apparently was referring to a meeting with tech executives at the White House, where tech leaders would sign a pledge promising to build new electricity generation and capacity wherever and whenever they build a new data center. It is unclear how such a pledge could be enforced, but it is a policy Republican-controlled states should embrace as tech companies expand.
Polling shows Republicans are concerned about rising electricity prices caused by data centers, although they are not nearly as concerned as Democrats. One recent poll found that while 85% of Democrats believe the costs of new data centers outweigh the benefits, just 55% of Republicans agreed.
More importantly, when asked if their concerns about higher electricity prices could be mitigated by new electric capacity, Republicans said yes. Morning Consult asked Democrats and Republicans to choose between two approaches to data center construction. The first option read, “The United States should stop AI data centers in order to decrease energy demand and keep the price of electricity down.” This is Sanders’s position, and it was favored by Democrats by 11 points over the alternative.
The second option, outlined by Trump, reads, “The United States should continue building AI centers and also develop more energy sources in order to increase energy supply and keep the price of electricity down.” Republicans favored this option by 12 points over the Sanders data center construction ban.
DEMOCRATS SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF THEIR IMMIGRATION POLICIES
The U.S. didn’t become the world’s leading power by outlawing energy-hungry technologies. It got there by building infrastructure to meet rising demand. That is the story of human progress, from fire to coal to oil to nuclear power. Higher living standards have never come from using less energy, but from learning to produce more of it reliably and cheaply. Societies that embrace energy abundance grow richer, more capable, and more productive. Those that stall fall behind. Data centers are the latest chapter in that long story.
Democratic states may choose construction bans, stagnation, and decline. Republican states should work with tech companies to show that the Republican Party knows how to build things, whether that is new housing, new roads, new transmission lines, new power plants, or new data centers. If Democrats ban the future, Republicans should host it.