Data centers have become essential national infrastructure powering everything from banking systems to healthcare, government services, and platforms like ChatGPT and Facebook. Yet public discourse and the Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY) movement increasingly frame them as environmental liabilities. 

That sentiment is now shaping public policy. New York has approved a one-year pause on permits for new large-scale data centers while officials review their impact. Meanwhile, Virginia (home to the world’s largest concentration of data centers) has become the first US state to introduce an electricity consumption tax on data centers.