Civil-Society Groups Slam White House Roundtable Between Tech and Utility Executives and Urge Inclusion of Climate and Consumer Perspectives

WASHINGTON —  On Thursday, tech and utility executives met with the White House to discuss the growing energy needs of data centers, and the White House followed up with a set of commitments. While the order made vague statements about clean-energy needs, it’s clear that the meeting gave Big Tech and for-profit energy companies preferential treatment in deciding energy policy. If this trend continues, working families and the planet will pay the price in the form of higher utility bills and stalled progress on the country’s climate goals.

Environmental organizations and members of the Athena Coalition responded:

John Farrell, co-director, Institute for Local Self-Reliance; director of ILSR’s Energy Democracy Initiative: “This is a marriage of two monopolized industries that will prove extremely costly for American electricity consumers who had no representation at this meeting. Data centers have already received as much as $700,000 per job in public subsidies, and investor-owned utilities are eagerly offering sweetheart deals to these data centers so they can profit from building the electric grid infrastructure to serve Big Tech’s desires.”

Julie Bolthouse, director of Land Use, Piedmont Environmental Council: “In Virginia, the lack of transparency around the explosive growth of data centers and the impacts on energy infrastructure, water resources, climate and air quality goals, and communities continues to be a threat to a clean energy transition and public accountability. We’ve seen that a general commitment to sustainability is simply not sufficient to protect our communities across the nation and the critical natural resources we depend on. High quality metrics for sustainability and oversight that ensures protection of electric ratepayers, local air quality, and water supply must be central themes in these discussions.”

Sierra Club Virginia Chapter: “Virginia knows firsthand what data center development looks like when there is a lack of transparency and respect for the communities that are forced to subsidize their development. We are not anti-data center but we are anti-data center development that hurts our chance at a fair and livable future. National leaders need to acknowledge that we are facing an energy crisis and a massive increase in pollution because of data centers alone. Now is the time to take realistic steps beyond empty sustainability promises to ensure we aren’t funding an industry that feigns interest in the well-being of people or the environment.”

Tyson Slocum, energy program director, Public Citizen: “We urge the Biden-Harris Administration to include environmental justice, environmental, consumer and other public interest voices as part of its next steps on AI infrastructure policy. The impact AI data centers have on deteriorating quality of life for local communities, disrupting environmental protection with their massive energy demands, and threatening consumers with higher utility bills requires public interest voices to be part of the discussion.”

Emily Peterson-Cassin, director of Corporate Power, Demand Progress Education Fund: “Many of the industry participants in this meeting are either under investigation by the government for anti-competitive business practices or actively being sued, in some cases because of the way they are running their AI businesses specifically. These are not the people we should trust to provide input on building responsible AI infrastructure that serves the public good. The new Task Force should include members of affected communities, climate experts, corporate accountability advocates, and labor unions representing the workers who will build all this infrastructure. And it shouldn’t include any company that is under investigation for corporate wrongdoing with respect to their AI business."

Jenna Ruddock, policy counsel, Free Press: “There is already far too little transparency and far too little community oversight concerning the siting, permitting, and operation of large-scale data center projects, including dedicated AI infrastructure. These projects, and the energy infrastructure needed to power them, have significant social and environmental costs that companies have done their best to downplay and, in some cases, hide. Real transparency, meaningful oversight, and active community engagement should be the focus of any conversations about expanding AI infrastructure, not tech and utility executives’ demands for more and faster development.”

Ryan Gerety, director, Athena Coalition: “When Big Tech and utility monopolies collude to set public energy policy, we should all be concerned. As part of an AI-boom, tech corporations are racing to build energy-hungry data centers with little actual attention paid to consequences for the planet and public. Today, coal plants are staying open so that the richest corporations in the world get the energy they want. Meanwhile, investor-owned utility monopolies are happy to turn a profit. If this continues, the public will pay higher energy costs, and we will have failed to build the clean energy infrastructure we need for the future of people and the planet.”