Eriech Tapia was driving home from a trip when he passed a stretch of dark industrial buildings along a jammed northern Virginia road. Data centers, one after another. “It was interesting to see how many were going up,” said the 30-year-old Republican from Arlington, who works in higher education advocacy. He thinks the facilities supply computing power that keeps the U.S. competitive, but he worries about how much electricity they use.
He has company. A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago finds that 53% of Americans are “extremely” or “very” concerned about the environmental impact of artificial intelligence. A year ago, 41% said so.
Democrats drive the shift
About two-thirds of Democrats are now highly concerned, up from about half in 2025. Around half of independents and about 4 in 10 Republicans say the same. The poll also shows wider unease about the local effects of the data centers that power AI and cloud computing.
AI also draws more worry than other heavy industries. Only about 3 in 10 adults are highly concerned about the impact of meat production or air travel.
“We’re undertaking a massive experiment in real time, and I don’t think there’ll be any putting the milk back in the bottle,” said Michael Greenstone, who directs the University of Chicago institute that worked on the survey. “Change is scary, and I think some of that is being reflected here.”
Where the buildings are going
The U.S. has thousands of data centers, with more planned. Some are smaller conventional sites that have operated for decades; others are hyperscale facilities built for AI’s added processing needs. Virginia and Texas have the most in operation, with California, Ohio and New York also among the top contenders.
A Pew Research Center analysis from earlier this year found that 87% of existing data centers sit in urban areas, while most new ones are planned for rural areas. Nancy Antunes, a 60-year-old retired Democrat from Waltham, Massachusetts, put the local complaint plainly: “I think that decisions are being made for the company, not for the community that they’re being built in.”
A recent United Nations University report predicted that the environmental footprint of data centers, already comparable to some of the world’s largest countries, will grow rapidly as AI spreads.
