Public opposition to data centers is high regardless of political affiliation. A new report from university researchers at Yale finds that opposition could change if people saw a win-win.
That's according to a new survey called Climate Change in the American Mind.
One strong reason for the opposition revolves around concerns that data centers might cause household utility bills to go up. But 74% of survey respondents said they would be more supportive of data centers if developers somehow helped offset their home electricity costs.
Kristin Eberhard is vice president of policy with the advocacy non-profit, "Rewiring America," which collaborated on the report.
"This tells us that a lot of the concern is not just knee-jerk resistance to growth itself or development itself. It's really opposition to a bad bargain, where communities are asked to absorb the costs while somebody else gets the benefit," Eberhard said.
Eberhart pointed to incentives that data center developers or local governments could provide to help lower consumer energy bills. For example, heat pump upgrades, rooftop solar panels, weatherization, home batteries and smart controls.
Several states are looking at options to regulate data centers.
States like New Jersey and Virginia are considering regulations that, among other things, would prevent data centers from shifting the cost of any increased power usage to customers.
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