California’s Bay Area debates data centres ahead of US midterm elections

In Oakland, protesters gathered outside City Hall to oppose new data centres, warning that they could strain the power grid and drive up household electricity bills. Carlos Gutierrez of the environmental justice group Communities for a Better Environment said some residents were considering turning off their power while the city planned to supply electricity to a data centre. Opposition is growing across the United States, where more than 3,000 data centres are operating and over 1,500 are in development, according to the Pew Research Center. In the San Francisco Bay Area, a hub for AI companies including Anthropic, OpenAI and Meta, residents are also concerned about the facilities’ heavy use of electricity and water and the heat they produce.