内容来源：https://www.wired.com/story/the-data-center-resistance-has-arrived/

内容总结：

【美国多地爆发数据中心建设抵制潮，民生诉求成政治博弈新焦点】

选举期间，佐治亚州民主党候选人彼得·哈伯德在竞选州公共服务委员会席位时发现，选民们除了抱怨连年上涨的电费外，对数据中心资源消耗的担忧正成为核心议题。"民众最关心生活成本，但紧随其后的就是数据中心过度消耗水电土地却享受税收减免的问题"，哈伯德在胜选后表示。这场胜利使民主党人时隔二十年重夺该州全州性职位。

据人工智能安全公司10a Labs旗下"数据中心观察"项目最新报告，2025年第二季度全美数据中心抵制行动出现"急剧升级"。仅3月至6月间，就有价值980亿美元的8个数据中心项目被叫停，9个项目延期，远超去年5月至今年3月640亿美元的受阻规模。在亚特兰大郊区，一项耗资170亿美元的项目因居民强烈反对被当地政府实施180天暂缓令。

这场跨党派抵制浪潮在共和党主导的佐治亚州、印第安纳州尤为显著。弗吉尼亚州劳登县州代表乔什·托马斯指出，全球最大数据中心集聚区的居民正承受电费上涨压力："过去几年电价相对稳定，如今数据中心用电负荷正在推高民生成本"。尽管成功连任，他仍面临对手"遏制数据中心扩张不力"的指责。

行业与民意的角力日趋白热化。数据中心联盟副主席丹·迪奥里奥强调，该行业去年在全美创造470万个高薪岗位，贡献1620亿美元税收。但民调显示，全美各党派支持数据中心的民众已不足半数。科技巨头应对迟缓，除Meta外多数企业仍依赖保密协议推进项目。

尽管遭遇阻力，行业扩张势头未减。Meta宣布未来三年将投入6000亿美元建设AI基础设施。分析师指出，近期受阻的930亿美元投资与科技公司的巨额投入相比仍是九牛一毛。弗吉尼亚州当选州长斯潘伯格已表态要求数据中心"承担相应电力成本"，托马斯议员则准备在新会期再次推动已遭州长否决的改革法案。

"以前抵制只是可能性，现在每个数据中心项目都可能引发组织化反抗"，报告作者米奎尔·维拉指出。随着请愿签名三个月内激增5万，两党议员纷纷接到选民咨询如何应对数据中心问题。这场关乎能源分配、税收公平与社区治理的博弈，正在重塑美国地方政治生态。

中文翻译：

选举日当天，彼得·哈伯德作为佐治亚州两名民主党候选人之一，在这场角逐中取得了决定性的——且出人意料的——胜利。他成功当选佐治亚州公共服务委员会委员，该机构负责监管该州电力事业。这是近二十年来民主党人首次在佐治亚州赢得全州性职位。

多年来，居民们一直抱怨公共服务委员会接连提高电价。但在哈伯德竞选期间，他注意到未来的选民们反复提及另一个话题。
“最核心的问题是生活成本，”他说，“但紧随其后的就是数据中心问题——人们担心它们会耗尽水资源、电力资源和土地资源，却几乎不缴纳任何税款。”

过去几年间，佐治亚州已成为数据中心建设的热点地区：有研究表明这里是全美数据中心发展最迅猛的市场之一（部分原因得益于税收优惠政策）。如今这里也成为了抵制数据中心建设的组织枢纽。一份最新报告发现，全美范围内社区对数据中心的反对声浪正在高涨。包括佐治亚州和印第安纳州在内的红州，正引领着这场两党共同参与的抵制浪潮。

这份新报告由人工智能安全公司10a Labs运营的“数据中心观察”项目发布。该项目追踪全美各地社区对数据中心的反对活动，自2023年起持续关注该议题，并于今年早些时候首次公布调研结果。（虽然10a Labs确实为AI公司提供风险分析，但报告作者米克尔·维拉表示“数据中心观察”项目独立于公司主营业务，且未接受任何客户资助。）本周发布的报告指出，自该组织首次公开调研结果以来，反对浪潮在数月间急剧升级。今年第二季度全美范围内的数据中心抵制活动呈现出“急剧升级”态势。

“数据中心观察”首份报告覆盖时段为2024年5月至2025年3月，期间地方抵制活动共阻止或延迟了总计640亿美元的数据中心项目（其中6个项目完全受阻，10个项目延期）。而新报告显示，仅2025年3月至6月期间，遭抵制叫停或推迟的项目金额就高达980亿美元——这三个月内有8个项目被否决（包括印第安纳州和肯塔基州各两个），另有9个项目延期。其中位于亚特兰大郊区耗资170亿美元的项目，就在当地居民强烈反对后，于5月被县政当局实施180天数据中心建设禁令而搁置。

维拉承认这份新报告存在“方法论上的局限性”。该报告仅基于媒体报道、法律文件及社交媒体等公开资料，而其所涵盖的时段正值美国数据中心建设激增期：行业网站ConstructConnect估算，截至今年8月美国数据中心建设支出已超越2024年全年总额。更多数据中心项目可能只是意味着更多社区开始对身边项目作出反应；媒体对这些项目的聚焦也可能助推抵制情绪。但“数据中心观察”在3月至6月期间监测到的其他数据激增——包括全美各地在此期间征集近5万个反对特定数据中心的请愿签名——维拉指出这标志着该议题已迎来“转折点”。
“过去抵制只是可能发生，”他表示，“现在但凡开发数据中心，就极有可能遭遇有组织的反对。”

在佐治亚州公共服务委员会竞选中胜出的哈伯德并非唯一受数据中心争议影响的政界候选人，佐治亚州也非唯一战场。在美国数据中心枢纽弗吉尼亚州，当选州长阿比盖尔·斯潘伯格表示要让数据中心“自负电费”。上周，气候新闻网站Heatmap报道了前拜登气候顾问约翰·麦考利夫的案例，其胜选很大程度上得益于反对数据中心的立场。该媒体同期发布的独立民调显示，全美各政治派别中支持建设数据中心的民众不足半数。

乔什·托马斯是劳登县选出的弗吉尼亚州众议员，该县自称拥有全球最密集的数据中心群。他在最近立法会期提交多份法案以限制数据中心扩张，数据中心议题也成为其最新竞选连任的核心焦点。（其共和党对手曾指责托马斯遏制数据中心蔓延的力度不足。）
上周成功连任的托马斯指出，当地对拟建威廉王子数字网关项目的抵制行动具有标志意义。这个计划在位于该州北部的国家保护区边缘兴建30余座数据中心的项目，已遭到业主团体提起诉讼。今年8月法官废除了项目区域规划许可，令建设暂时停滞。
“小人物终于获胜，这在任何行业都属罕见，更不用说面对‘辉煌十巨头’的领域，”他谈及美国科技巨头时表示，“我认为这凝聚了弗吉尼亚州民众的政治力量。”

与哈伯德相似，托马斯也表示众多选民担忧数据中心推高电费。“民众的成本意识明显增强，”他指出。托马斯解释说，电价“多年来保持相对稳定”，但在弗吉尼亚州，数据中心的电力负荷正在助推公共事业费用上涨。

尽管托马斯与哈伯德均为民主党人，但“数据中心观察”报告强调，对数据中心的抵制已形成跨党派共识。包括参议员乔希·霍利、众议员托马斯·马西及玛乔丽·泰勒·格林在内的共和党国会议员也已开始公开反对。
持续数月批评数据中心扩张的格林于11月7日在X平台发文：“民众必须密切关注地方政府对数据中心的审批，要求保障水电账单不受影响！！”

迄今科技巨头对数据中心项目遭遇抵制的公开回应寥寥。虽然Meta等公司会公布数据中心相关信息，但该行业在新建项目时普遍严格依赖保密协议，几乎不向社区披露项目细节——包括可能涉及的科技公司名单。

数据中心联盟作为重要行业组织，其州政策副总裁丹·迪奥里奥在声明中表示，行业仍看到全美各地对承接数据中心存在“显著兴趣”，成员企业致力于“持续开展社区互动与利益相关方教育”，并成为运营所在地“负责任、响应迅速的友好邻居”。
“美国数据中心行业为地方社区带来重大效益——在全国创造数十万个高薪岗位，提供数十亿美元经济投资，并为地方、州及联邦税收作出重要贡献，这些税收用于资助学校、交通、公共安全等社区优先事项，”迪奥里奥说，“总体而言，2023年美国数据中心支撑了470万个工作岗位，贡献了1620亿美元的各级税收。”

公众态度的转变或许不足以遏制数据中心建设的市场热情。尽管930亿美元的延迟和受阻投资绝非小数目，但分析师指出，与推动当前美国经济的科技巨头巨额资金流入相比仍相形见绌。（仅Meta上周就宣布未来三年将向包括数据中心在内的人工智能基础设施投入6000亿美元。）即便某些社区成功阻击了数据中心，这类胜利也可能只是暂时的。例如威廉王子数字网关项目的裁决就在10月被暂缓执行，待明年案件审理期间允许恢复施工。

托马斯仍对弗吉尼亚州下个立法会期的数据中心改革抱有宏大计划，包括重新提交已在5月通过议会但遭州长格伦·扬金否决的改革法案。
“不断有共和党人和民主党人前来询问：‘我们能如何推动这件事？我的选民对此事的关注度前所未有，’”他说，“我们主张数据中心改革的立法者联盟正在持续壮大。”

英文来源：

On Election Day, Peter Hubbard was one of two Democratic candidates who took a decisive—and surprising—victory in Georgia. Hubbard was elected to the Georgia Public Service Commission, the body that regulates the state’s electric utility. It’s the first time Democrats have taken statewide seats in Georgia in nearly two decades.
Residents have complained for years about a series of rate hikes from the PSC. But during Hubbard’s campaigning, he noticed another topic coming up again and again with his future constituents.
“The number one issue was affordability,” he says. “But a very close second was data centers and the concern around them just sucking up the water, the electricity, the land—and not really paying any taxes.”
Georgia has become a hot spot for data center development over the past few years: Some research indicates it’s one of the fastest-growing markets for data center development in the country (thanks, in part, to some generous tax breaks). It’s also now a nexus for organizing against those same data centers. Community opposition to data centers, a new report finds, is on the rise across the country. And red states, including Georgia and Indiana, are leading this wave of bipartisan opposition.
The new report was released by Data Center Watch, a project run by AI security company 10a Labs that tracks community opposition to data centers across the country. The company has been keeping eyes on this topic since 2023, and released its first public findings earlier this year. (While 10a Labs does offer risk analysis for AI companies, report author Miquel Vila says that the Data Center Watch project is separate from the company’s main work, and is not paid for by any clients.) But this week’s report finds that the tide has turned sharply in the months since the group’s first public output. The second quarter of this year, the new report finds, represented “a sharp escalation” in data center opposition across the country.
Data Center Watch’s first report covered a period from May 2024 to March of 2025; in that period, it found, local opposition had blocked or delayed a total of $64 billion in data center projects (six projects were blocked entirely, while 10 were delayed). But Data Center Watch’s new report found that opposition blocked or delayed $98 billion in projects from March to June of 2025 alone—eight projects, including two in Indiana and Kentucky, were blocked in those three months, while nine were delayed. One of those projects, a $17 billion development in the Atlanta suburbs, was put on hold in May after the county imposed a 180-day moratorium on data center development, following significant pushback from local residents.
There are some “methodological caveats” to the new Data Center Watch report, Vila acknowledges. The new report, which is based solely on public documents including media reports, legal filings, and social media, covers a period of time when data center construction in the US exploded: Industry website ConstructConnect estimates that US spending on data construction by August of this year exceeded all spending in 2024. More data center projects may simply mean more communities are reacting to ones coming to their backyards; more media attention on these projects also may juice up opposition. But the sharp increase in other data observed by Data Center Watch between March and June—including nearly 50,000 signatures on petitions opposing specific data centers across the country in that time period—indicates that there has been “a turning point” in the issue, Vila says.
“Before, [resistance] was something that could happen,” he says. “Now it seems that it’s very likely that when you are developing [a data center], potentially someone is going to organize.”
Hubbard, who won the Georgia PSC seat, isn’t the only political candidate who has had opposition to data centers play a role in their race, nor is Georgia the only battleground. In Virginia, the country’s data center hub, governor-elect Abigail Spanberger said she wanted to have data centers “pay their own way” for power. Last week, climate journalism site Heatmap profiled John McAuliff, a former Biden climate adviser who won his election based in large part on opposition to data centers. Separate polling from Heatmap, also released last week, shows that less than half of Americans from all political persuasions would support a data center.
Josh Thomas is a Virginia state delegate from Loudoun County, which, the county claims, has the highest concentration of data centers in the world. He introduced multiple bills during the last legislative session to rein in data centers in Virginia, and data center issues figured prominently in his most recent election. (His opponent, a Republican, alleged that Thomas did not go far enough in trying to stop data center sprawl.)
Thomas, who won reelection last week, points to the local pushback against the proposed Prince William Digital Gateway, which would put more than 30 data centers on the edge of a national reserve located in the north of the state. A group of homeowners have challenged the project in court, and a judge voided zoning in August, which temporarily halted construction.
“The little guy finally won, which rarely happens in any industry, let alone where the Magnificent Ten play,” he says, referring to the US’s biggest tech companies. “I think that rallied people politically in Virginia.”
Thomas, like Hubbard, also says he sees a lot of his constituents concerned about how data centers will affect their electricity bill. “People are just a lot more cost-conscious,” he says. Energy bills, Thomas says “are something that was kept relatively static for a number of years.” But in Virginia, electricity load from data centers are helping to drive up utility bills, Thomas says.
Both Thomas and Hubbard are Democrats, but opposition to data centers, the Data Center Watch report stresses, has been thoroughly bipartisan. And some national Republican politicians, including Sen. Josh Hawley, Rep. Thomas Massie, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, have begun to speak out against them.
“People you have got to pay close attention to your local city, county, and state approvals of data centers and demand your water and energy bills be protected!!!” Greene, who has criticized data center expansion for months, posted on X on November 7.
Big tech companies have to date made few public statements about pushback to data center projects. While some, like Meta, provide public-facing information on their data centers, others in the industry lean heavily on nondisclosure agreements when building new data centers, providing little to no information to communities about these projects—including which tech companies may be involved.
In a statement, Dan Diorio, the vice president of state policy for the Data Center Coalition, a leading industry group, said that the industry is continuing to see “significant interest” from communities across the country in hosting data centers and that members are committed to “continued community engagement and stakeholder education,” as well as “being responsible and responsive neighbors in the communities where they operate.”
“The US data center industry provides significant benefits to local communities—creating hundreds of thousands of high-wage jobs across the nation, providing billions of dollars in economic investment, and generating significant local, state, and federal tax revenue that helps fund schools, transportation, public safety, and other community priorities,” Diorio said. “All told, US data centers supported 4.7 million jobs and contributed $162 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2023.”
The sea change in public sentiment may not be enough to stem the market enthusiasm for data center build-out. While $93 billion in delayed and blocked investments is certainly not a small number, it’s chump change compared to the massive influx of cash from big tech companies that is, analysts say, currently driving the US economy. (Meta alone said last week that it will invest $600 billion into AI infrastructure, including data centers, over the next three years.) And even though some communities are successfully pushing back against data centers, those wins can be temporary. The ruling on the Prince William Digital Gateway, for instance, was stayed in October, allowing construction to resume as the case moves towards trial next year.
Still, Thomas has big plans for data center reform in Virginia’s next legislative session, including reintroducing a reform bill of his that passed the legislature in May but was vetoed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
“I have Republicans and Democrats coming to me saying, ‘How can we help with this issue? My constituents are talking about it like they never have before,’” he says. “Our coalition of data center reform-minded legislators has just grown to a very large number.”