The New Price of a Data Center Moving In
Americans don't want AI data centers. The communities that say yes are getting paid.
Two-thirds of Americans oppose data centers in their communities. Moratoriums are spreading from New York to Texas. Elon Musk wants to put them in space.
For everyone else, there's a new playbook: the community benefit agreement.
What communities are getting:
- *New Albany, Ohio* — a tax abatement came with funding for a local arboretum, STEM programs, and $200K for a community center
- *Henrico County, Virginia* — $60M in data center revenue seeded an affordable housing trust fund targeting 750 homes over five years
Real money. But small change next to what Ari Matusiak of Rewiring America says the industry should be paying.
His math: A 200-megawatt data center — increasingly standard — represents ~$500M in energy procurement. Spend that on rooftop solar, batteries, and heat pumps for nearby homes instead of new grid infrastructure, and you could upgrade ~50,000 households while cutting demand on the grid.
"Basically what we're saying is do the $510 million, not the $10 million."
States are catching on:
- *New Jersey* — Gov. Mikie Sherrill signed a bill requiring large data centers to pay their share of grid costs, with credits for funding demand reductions elsewhere
- *New York* — Gov. Kathy Hochul paused data center development for up to a year while regulators weigh similar requirements
The catch: None of the deals signed so far work the way Matusiak envisions. Early agreements still flow through utilities, not directly to homeowners.
"There actually haven't been any cases yet where the data center company is going door to door and trying to give people heat pumps." — Lauren Shwisberg, RMI
Opposition keeps climbing even as deals get more common. Money alone hasn't fixed the trust problem — and the tide hasn't turned yet.