Vice President J.D. Vance said Thursday that opposition to data centers stems from fears that the facilities powering the artificial-intelligence boom will overload the grid and raise electric bills.
“The political backlash over data centers, a very large chunk of it, is that people associated data centers with, ’My neighborhood is going to get worse and, in particular, my power bills are going to go up,’” Mr. Vance said during a White House press briefing.
President Trump recently gave a full endorsement of data centers, saying towns that reject the facilities will end up backward and poor, while allowing China to speed ahead in the AI race.
The fight over data centers has become a hot topic in the midterm elections.
Many voters balk at the prospect of data centers in their community, saying the facilities use too much power and water, create noise and ugly eyesores on their land, and fail to be the job-creating boon that politicians and Big Tech executives promised.
Opposition to data centers cuts across political lines. Both parties are worried the tradeoffs will not favor local voters.
Mr. Vance said AI companies could do themselves a favor by ensuring a steady supply of power. He pointed to deregulatory efforts by the administration that allow data centers to generate their own power, so they don’t become a drain on the local grid.
“You have to feed power back into the grid as opposed to taking power out,” Mr. Vance said.
The vice president said, more broadly, the fight over data centers is a byproduct of the fact that the U.S. abandoned its manufacturing base. He said the administration is trying to change that, while making facilities such as power centers self-sustaining.
“We cannot be a country that says, ’We’re not going to build anything anymore,’” Mr. Vance said.
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