States rolling out red carpets for data centres. But some lawmakers are pushing back

The explosive growth of the data centres needed to power America’s fast-rising demand for artificial intelligence and cloud computing platforms has spurred states to dangle incentives in hopes of landing an economic bonanza, but it’s also eliciting pushback from lawmakers and communities.

Activity in state legislatures – and competition for data centres – has been brisk in recent months, amid an intensifying buildout of the energy-hungry data centres and a search for new sites that was ignited by the late 2022 debut of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Many states are…