It was as if Connie Lane were standing on the precipice of the Grand Canyon, she said, staring in disbelief at its enormity.
The hyperscale data center near Milwaukee, where Lane had been visiting with friends from law school for a June reunion, left her incredulous.
“I can’t begin to describe the scope. They brought in these huge lines to feed them electricity. I was stunned. It’s one thing when you read about it; it’s another thing to see it,” she said.
Lane, a Democratic state representative, is running for reelection in Merrimack District 13, or Concord’s Ward 2. In her response to the Monitor’s general election survey, she cited energy policy and the feared effect of data centers on the power grid and ratepayers as one of the most salient issues facing the state of New Hampshire.
There are currently ten data centers in New Hampshire, four of which are clustered in Manchester, according to the tracking platform Data Center Map. Proposals in Bow and Nottingham have spurred public outcry that, in the latter case, prompted the developer to withdraw his plan just hours before the town’s planning board was scheduled to review it.
That opposition is hardly exclusive to the Granite State. Data centers have unified Democrats and Republicans, progressives and conservatives, in forceful resistance as local disputes over land use, municipal transparency, tax incentives and environmental impacts repeat themselves nationwide.
“They’re going to come in, electricity is going to soar, and are we really ready for this vast use of our land? Is this the way we really want to develop acres and acres and acres?” Lane said.
Earlier this year in New Hampshire, a group of Republican lawmakers inverted an effort to affirm municipalities’ ability to regulate data centers, amending the language of the bill, Senate Bill 439, to do the opposite: allow data centers by right in areas zoned for commercial or industrial development. The bill was ultimately tabled and didn’t advance further.
Gov. Kelly Ayotte, a Republican, told WMUR at the time that she opposed those alterations to the bill. In the months since, she’s stated she will impose a moratorium on new data center developments with the upcoming state budget, citing concern that, at an average energy consumption of 100 megawatts, even one hyperscale development could overburden the regional grid.
“I’ve been clear that I oppose siting data centers in New Hampshire, including the proposed projects in Nottingham and Bow. Data centers would drive up our already too-high energy costs, and I share the concerns raised about their impact on our water and environment,” she said in a statement to the Monitor.
Her gubernatorial challenger, Democrat Cinde Warmington, said she doubts the governor’s intentions based on her perceived lack of leadership on data center-related bills, like SB 439, and that she would like to see the state act more expediently.
If elected, Warmington said she would impose a temporary moratorium on the permitting of new data centers on “day-one.” Her campaign’s “data center bill of rights” outlines some of the safeguards she’d push for in a regulatory framework: limits on noise pollution, requirements that construction draw on local labor through protected agreements and protections for clean air and water.
“I think it is really hypocritical that Gov. Ayotte now suddenly is calling for a moratorium,” Warmington told the Monitor. “Now she says she’s for a moratorium in her budget next year — by next year we could have a massive data center in our state. We know there’s one proposed in Bow. So too little, too late, and pretty disingenuous.”
Imagining how the legislature might devise more permanent regulations on data centers, Lane told the Monitor the state “would certainly want to do a lot of study” to inform the drafting process, but that “personally, I don’t want them at all.”
The hyperscale data centers recently proposed in New Hampshire provide a window into the rabid acceleration of development to keep pace with artificial intelligence’s demand for computing power, and the imposing dimension of data centers being built in other parts of the country.
One colossal data center development, imagined by technology company Fermi America for the Texas Panhandle and dubbed “Project Matador”, is expected to have a capacity of 17 gigawatts. The development’s first power-generating equipment, three 480,000-pound gas turbines, arrived on site near Amarillo last month, according to local reporting. By comparison, the proposal that public filings indicate is in the very early, exploratory stages of being permitted for development in Bow could draw between 200 and 350 megawatts of power — two percent of that capacity.
William Lynch, the Democratic candidate for Merrimack District 10, which includes Hooksett and Dunbarton, said he worries not only about the unmistakable environmental consequences of such large developments but the possibility that, if the AI bubble bursts, today’s enormous investments will produce warehouses full of data storage no one uses tomorrow.
“I’ve seen commitments to build out data centers that progress as far as building. But some data centers are not keeping pace with their commitments, and I’m concerned that it might come to a point, in two or three years, where the overall investment and use of the computing power won’t keep up,” he said.
Lynch had an eight-year career with tech giant Oracle, a major cloud and AI data center operator. He described his work — first as a cloud applications engineer, then pivoting to health applications — as building the software infrastructure on top of which other software engineers iterate. His software could be adapted for use on websites like Facebook or the New York Times, or it could be deployed into traditional data centers.
While he doesn’t think it’s appropriate for the state to mandate that any kind of commercial development be allowed by right, he also isn’t advocating a ban. Rather, even in the contentious milieu of data centers, he said he believes in the principles of local control and informed consent.
“I wouldn’t say I’m against a moratorium, but it’s not what I’m pushing for. I believe in local control; when communities do decide to put in a data center, they should understand the negative impacts,” he said.
When Senate Bill 439 was amended in the state’s House of Representatives to conflict with its original intent, members of the body’s Municipal and County Government Committee voted along party lines to pass it.
Republican Rep. Deborah Aylward, who is running for reelection in Merrimack District 5, voted to approve the language barring local governments from regulating data centers. She said she’s since revised her thinking.
“It was before the widespread national attention and public debate surrounding large-scale data center development,” Aylward wrote in a statement to the Monitor. “At the time, I had every reason to believe that data centers, like other commercial and industrial developments, should not be categorically prohibited but should instead be subject to reasonable zoning requirements and responsible development standards.”
Aylward said she now supports the governor’s plan for a multiyear moratorium, as opposed to an outright ban, because it will afford the state time to examine the impacts of large-scale data centers and decide which guardrails to enforce.
“I continue to believe that technological and economic development should not be unnecessarily prohibited. However, responsible development requires a clear understanding of both its benefits and its potential consequences,” she said. “I do not believe we should close the door to future opportunities, but neither should we open that door without fully understanding what may come through it.”
Democratic Rep. Eleana Colby, who is running for reelection in Merrimack District 9, voted against the amendment to allow data centers by right. Colby could not be reached for comment.
