Land and data-center sites, North Carolina
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Are data centers bad? The objections, checked against the record

Most data centers are not AI facilities. They run cloud services, websites, payments, streaming, and North Carolina's own 911 network. Some objections to data centers are wrong and some are right. The public record separates them.

Discuss your land

Quick summary: This guide checks the common arguments against data centers against federal, state, and county records. It is for residents, landowners, and local officials weighing a proposal. The short answer: most objections rest on a wrong premise, and a few rest on real costs that a permit, tariff, or contract has to answer.

A data center is not the same as an AI center

A data center is a building that houses computing equipment and the power, cooling, and network connections that keep it running. The definition does not require artificial intelligence. The International Energy Agency’s Energy and AI report defines enterprise, colocation, and hyperscale facilities by who owns them and who uses them, not by workload. The federal industry classification for the sector covers computing infrastructure, data processing, web hosting, and streaming support.

AI is one workload among several, and today it is the smaller share. The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory report to the Department of Energy estimates that AI servers used more than 40 terawatt-hours of the 176 terawatt-hours that United States data centers consumed in 2023. That is less than a quarter. The rest ran cloud services, websites, business systems, and storage.

The share is growing. The International Energy Agency’s 2026 update projects that AI-focused facilities could use close to half of global data-center electricity by 2030 in its base case. So the honest answer has two parts. The label “data center” does not mean AI. A specific proposal still has to say what it will run. Start with What is a data center?, then see What is an AI data center? and How much energy does AI use?.

Data centers are older than the public internet

Data centers predate the commercial internet by decades. The Census Bureau signed a contract for UNIVAC I, which it calls the first successful civilian computer, in 1951, and IBM’s archive records a company data centre in 1963. The first ARPANET message followed in 1969. When was the first data center built? A short history gives the full timeline.

The commercial internet arrived later. The federal NSFNET backbone retired on April 30, 1995, and traffic moved to commercial networks. Those networks met inside buildings where carriers rented space side by side. The EPA sent Congress a report on server and data center energy efficiency in 2007.

North Carolina has its own long record. A 2020 state plan in the North Carolina energy program report describes the state’s Eastern Data Center in Raleigh as home to the state’s primary data center for about 29 years. Large campuses have operated in Caldwell, Catawba, and Rutherford counties since the late 2000s and early 2010s. Catawba County’s 2012 financial report already described one as built and running.

What runs in a data center

Data centers run the services that households, businesses, and governments use each day. The records below come from the agencies and companies that operate those services. What are data centers used for? and Why do we need data centers? go further.

Cryptocurrency mining is a separate use. The International Energy Agency reports its electricity separately from data centers.

The Census Bureau’s 2024 survey estimates that about 93 of every 100 North Carolina households subscribe to broadband, and a similar number own a smartphone. Those connections carry the services above. That fact explains why the buildings exist. It does not settle whether a specific project belongs on a specific tract.

Why organizations move servers out of their own buildings

Organizations move servers out of their own buildings for specialist staff, physical security, and shared cost. NIST’s cloud security guidelines name staff specialization as a security opportunity. The federal government closed and consolidated its own data centers under a 2019 OMB policy, and the GAO reported the savings. North Carolina consolidated agency IT under one department that runs shared hosting.

Private companies show the same pattern in their own records. A computer maker with its North American headquarters in North Carolina has described its own move toward cloud. A cable and internet provider counts more than 1,000 hubs and data centers in its network. A tire maker with a plant in Wilson announced a cloud partnership for its operations in 2022. See What is a colocation data center?, Data center vs. cloud: on-premises, colocation, and cloud compared, and Who owns data centers?.

The security case has limits. Under the federal cloud definition, customers still control their operating systems, storage, and applications. The state’s colocation terms leave software patches with the customer. Outsourcing is not always cheaper: in a 2026 GAO review, 17 of 24 federal agencies named cloud cost control as a challenge. No public record measures security as the main reason large companies move.

The short version: Data centers are the working infrastructure of the internet, not a new kind of AI building. The real questions about a proposal are local: its power terms, its water source, its sound, its generators, and what the county keeps after incentives.

Data centers run on the same grid as everyone else

Data centers draw power from utility grids on every inhabited continent. The International Energy Agency’s 2026 update estimates 485 terawatt-hours of data-center use worldwide in 2025, with the largest shares in North America, Asia Pacific, and Europe. The national laboratory’s 2026 update puts United States data centers at 4.7 percent of national electricity in 2024, with a 2030 reference case near 12 percent.

The power-bill objection is a fair question. New demand can raise costs. Whether household bills rise depends on approved rates and the terms large customers sign. North Carolina law requires cost-based allocation between customer classes under performance-based rate plans, and it requires subsidies between classes to be minimized as far as practical. The state’s 2026 energy task force report describes contributions for requested facilities, minimum billing demand, and contract terms for large loads. A proposed separate rate class for data centers has not been adopted.

Those rules reduce the risk. They do not remove it. The North Carolina Utilities Commission decides each case on its record. Data center power requirements: what a campus needs from the grid covers capacity and service commitments. Do data centers raise electric bills in North Carolina? covers the bill question, How much electricity do data centers use? the national totals, and Why are so many data centers being built? the demand behind them.

Where the objections are right

Some objections hold up against the record. A page that hides them is not worth reading.

These are project questions. Each one has an answer in a permit, a study, a tariff, or a contract. The neighbors decide more sites than the zoning map explains why they shape where projects go. How a data center gets approved in North Carolina and How to take part in a data center hearing in North Carolina cover the public process.

What North Carolina’s old industries left behind

North Carolina’s legacy industries shrank sharply, but they did not vanish. The 2004 tobacco reform ended federal quotas and price supports and paid transition payments through 2014. The Census of Agriculture counts 7,850 North Carolina farms that harvested tobacco in 2002 and 822 in 2022. Tobacco remains a working crop on fewer, larger farms, with 121,000 acres harvested in 2025. See North Carolina tobacco land: what changed and where it goes now.

Factory employment fell further. Federal payroll estimates for North Carolina show these August-to-August changes from 1990 to 2026:

Industry August 1990 August 2026 (preliminary)
Textile mills 170,500 19,200
Apparel manufacturing 92,100 3,700
Furniture manufacturing 89,000 26,900

Some of the places those industries left now host data centers. The EPA documents a Forest City data center built on two former textile and manufacturing brownfields. In Catawba County, one data-center operator held 4.70 percent of taxable assessed value in fiscal 2025. In Caldwell County, another held 7.63 percent. Those are large shares for a single taxpayer. See North Carolina textile and furniture mills: what the land is now and Brownfield redevelopment in North Carolina.

A data center is not a cure. Caldwell and Rutherford remain in the state’s most distressed county tier in 2026. Incentive agreements can return part of the tax. Permanent staff counts are small. Data center jobs: what a project brings a community separates construction work from lasting jobs. Do data centers fund schools? What Texas, Virginia, and North Carolina records show and Community benefit agreements for data centers: what residents can ask for cover what host communities can receive.

Take action: If you own former tobacco, timber, or mill land in North Carolina, the record can tell you whether it reads as a data-center site before anyone else does. Start with Is your land a data-center site?

What is actually taking North Carolina farmland

Low-density housing takes most of the farmland North Carolina loses to development, according to the most detailed public model. The Census of Agriculture shows the state lost 16,303 farms and about 1.3 million acres of farmland between 1997 and 2022. American Farmland Trust’s model estimates that development converted or compromised 732,000 acres of North Carolina agricultural land from 2001 to 2016. It attributes about four of every five of those acres to low-density residential use. What is taking North Carolina farmland? covers the full record.

Housing and industry also differ in what they cost a county. Cost of Community Services studies compare what each land use pays in revenue with what it uses in services. Wake County’s study found that residential land used about 1.09 dollars in services for each dollar of revenue it paid. Commercial and industrial land used about 8 cents. Chatham County’s study found about 1.18 dollars against 29 cents.

These studies describe existing county finances. They do not predict the result of one new campus. Farm and forest land also paid more than it used in both counties. A data center on former cropland still removes cropland, and new roofs and pavement still change runoff. The fair comparison is between the actual alternatives for the tract, not between a data center and an idealized field. Selling farm or timber land for development covers the landowner’s side of that choice.

What the public record shows

The public record shows what data centers are, how long they have existed, what they run, and how North Carolina’s rules assign their costs. It shows what the state’s legacy industries lost and where farmland actually goes. It cannot show what a specific proposal will run, what it will draw from the grid, or what it will pay a county after incentives. The applicant’s filings, the serving utility, the air and water permits, and the county’s tax and incentive records answer those questions. Are data centers bad for the environment? covers the environmental record in more depth.

Key recap

  • A data center houses computing for cloud services, websites, payments, phones, and public services. AI used less than a quarter of United States data-center electricity in 2023, and its share is rising.
  • Data centers date to at least the 1960s, decades before the commercial internet.
  • North Carolina law assigns grid costs by customer class, but household bill effects depend on approved rates and contract terms.
  • Water, noise, generators, and tax incentives are real project questions with answers in permits, studies, and agreements.
  • Low-density housing, not industry, accounts for most of the farmland North Carolina has lost to development in the most detailed public model.

Questions

Are all data centers AI data centers?

No. Most data-center electricity in the United States still runs conventional computing such as cloud services, websites, and storage. AI’s share is growing, so ask what a specific proposal will run.

How long have data centers existed?

Organizations have run dedicated computer facilities since at least the 1960s, before the internet existed. The commercial internet that runs through today’s data centers took shape in the mid-1990s.

Do data centers raise electric bills in North Carolina?

They can. North Carolina law requires cost-based allocation between customer classes, and utility terms charge large customers for some requested facilities. The Utilities Commission decides how costs fall in each rate case.

Are data centers taking North Carolina farmland?

Some campuses sit on former farmland. Low-density housing accounts for most of the farmland the state has lost, according to the American Farmland Trust model of 2001 to 2016.

References

Primary sources cited on this page, in APA style.

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