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While data centers have long existed in California, the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) has significantly increased demand for new data centers over the last five years, and the pace is expected to increase through the rest of the decade. This explosive growth has led to a corresponding increase in energy demand, which has resulted in rising electricity consumption, carbon emissions, water usage, and public health costs arising from air pollution. This report presents a quantitative assessment of the environmental and public health impacts of California’s data centers between 2019 and 2023, finding that electricity usage, carbon emissions, and water consumption nearly doubled over the period, while public health impacts more than tripled. To support forward-looking planning, the report also provides projections through 2028, underscoring the need to better understand and manage the impacts of rapid data center expansion on California communities and to implement strategies that support sustainable development.

This organizer guide explains what data centers are and argues that Big Tech’s rapid data center expansion—driven largely by AI—imposes major costs on communities while delivering few public benefits. It outlines harms including higher utility bills, grid instability and safety risks, reduced funding for schools and public services due to tax breaks, increased air pollution and health impacts from fossil fuel reliance and diesel generators, heavy potable water consumption (often in water-stressed regions), land grabs that displace housing and farmland, weak job creation promises, and expanded surveillance and policing technologies enabled by data center infrastructure. The guide provides organizing and policy tactics to slow or stop projects, including zoning reform, tax policy limits, transparency requirements, renewable energy and utility-rate reforms, voting down proposals, moratoriums, and coalition-building and public education strategies.

This report argues that Big Tech data center expansion across the U.S. South is being framed as “progress,” but is driving major economic and environmental extraction—raising utility costs, consuming enormous water supplies (even in drought-prone regions), and increasing fossil fuel infrastructure like gas plants and pipelines to meet electricity demand. It highlights that many data center deals are negotiated in secrecy through NDAs, limiting public input and democratic oversight, while communities—especially Black and working-class communities in historically overburdened “sacrifice zones”—face the health and resource impacts. The report also documents growing resistance and organizing across Southern states and calls for communities to reject data center projects, demand transparent public processes, expose greenwashing, protect natural resources, and connect opposition to data centers with broader fights against surveillance.

This July 2025 policy report explains how rapid data center growth can raise local utility rates, consume massive amounts of electricity and water, and undermine climate goals by keeping fossil-fuel plants online. It argues that data center tax breaks often fail to deliver promised job benefits while reducing school and local tax revenues. The report recommends stronger state policies—mandatory energy audits, efficiency standards, renewable energy integration with “additionality” requirements, and transparent reporting—and suggests repealing tax incentives if sustainability measures don’t work.