Moving Fast and Breaking Climate goals: What Pennsylvania’s Data Center boom means for local communities
$90 billion in investments could reshape the energy landscape, but community voices and renewable alternatives are missing from the plan.
Plymouth Township voted against an AI data center in Conshocken last evening. Although the developer can bring up the project to the township’s zoning hearing board later this month, this is just one data center project surfacing in PA.
Governor Shapiro has positioned AI developments as a means to strengthen the commonwealth’s role in the global AI race, framing the competition as a national security issue.
A proposed AI data center development in Erie would repurpose an old coal-fired power plant into a 4.5-gigawatt natural gas facility, large enough to power about 3 million homes, and the largest of its kind in the U.S. Microsoft and Constellation Energy want to bring the shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear facility back online to power Microsoft’s AI infrastructure.
In June, Governor Shapiro announced that Amazon would invest $20 billion to develop two massive data centers in Bucks and Luzerne counties, citing thousands of construction jobs and at least 1,250 permanent, high-paying, high-tech roles.
In July, Pennsylvania hosted its first-ever Energy and Innovations Summit, focusing on aligning artificial intelligence with fossil fuel energy. Private corporations announced more than $90 billion in investments in data centers, energy infrastructure, and AI workforce training at the summit.
A coalition of 27 groups across the state wrote a letter to Shapiro with concerns regarding what fossil fuel investments will mean, including dramatically increasing greenhouse gas emissions and reducing the availability of renewable energy on the grid. Without policy interventions, growing energy demands from data centers would drive up energy costs for consumers. This would occur both due to the need for new generation, substations, and transmission infrastructure, and because of the increased strain on existing energy supplies.
Legislative Shifts and the Reshaping of Permitting in Pennsylvania
To accommodate this energy and data infrastructure boom, Pennsylvania’s regulatory landscape is being reshaped. Governor Shapiro’s Executive Order 2024-04 established the PA Permit Fast Track Program, a move that has led to major changes in how the Department of Environmental Protection processes permits. The two new permitting-focused programs created as a result: SPEED (Streamlining Permits for Economic Expansion and Development), which allows consultants to review permit applications and receive priority in the DEP review process; and the FAST Track Program, designed to accelerate permitting for high-impact projects involving multiple agencies.
Critics warn that these changes reduce public oversight and engagement, especially for large-scale projects with potentially serious environmental consequences that should receive greater levels of scrutiny and local community involvement.
House Bill 502, introduced by Rep. Mandy Steele of Allegheny County, seeks to streamline the approval of energy generation and storage facilities by creating the Reliable Energy Siting and Electric Transition (RESET) Board.
This bill proposes removing authority from local governments over energy infrastructure siting decisions, transferring final approval to a state-level board selected by the governor and led by DEP Secretary Shirley. The board would be empowered to approve fascilities like fracked gas plants, hydrogen energy facilities, and even incineration projects, regardless of local opposition.
Opponents argue that this bill strips Pennsylvanians of their constitutional environmental rights under Article 1, Section 27 of the state’s Environmental Rights Amendment, removing established processes for local review and public input.
Environmental justice advocates are especially concerned. Pennsylvania does not currently have a cumulative impact framework that allows the DEP to deny permits in communities already overburdened by pollution. Although House Bill 109 proposes such a framework, its passage remains unlikely in the Republican-controlled Senate.
A Pennsylvania Senate Committee hearing on August 11 heard testimony from industry stakeholders, economic development agencies, energy companies, and regulatory bodies. Absent were representatives from communities directly impacted by the data centers.
John L. Augustine III, CEO of Penn’s Northeast, presented the development of data centers as part of a larger economic evolution, highlighting that northeastern Pennsylvania has “the power and a lot of it,” thanks to the Marcellus Shale’s natural gas supply.
Testimony from the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) raised concerns about the significant water requirements of data centers resulting from their cooling and energy demands. Even air-based cooling systems, which require less direct water use, rely on electricity generated by water-cooled power plants. As the number and size of data centers increase, their impact on water supply and quality will grow, especially during droughts or periods of low water flow.
The Department of Environmental Protection also provided testimony, promoting its new permitting initiatives, namely the SPEED and FAST Track programs, as ways to make Pennsylvania more attractive to “high-tech, capital-intensive” developments.
However, the agency did not discuss the impact on the air, land, and water, or explore new renewable alternatives. There was no mention of the cumulative ecological cost of these projects, no analysis of job quality or sustainability, and no commitment to ensuring that the state’s constitutional right to clean air is upheld.
Photo: by Igor Omilaev on Unsplash
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