Overwhelming Majorities in Canada, U.S. Say No to Local Data Centre Development
August 19, 2026
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Author: The Energy Mix staff
Full Story: The Energy Mix
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Public opposition to artificial intelligence (AI) data centre projects is surging across Canada and the United States, as outrage over the projects’ energy and water use, noise pollution, carbon footprint—and their proponents’ habit of often ignoring or flouting community opposition—unites voters across the political spectrum.
The latest news showed up this week in an exclusive poll for Heatmap that showed public support for data centres collapsing over the last year, with 75% of respondents now saying they oppose development in their communities. The poll results arrived hot on the heels of a decision this week by the Alberta Utility Commission (AUC) to disallow a $1-billion, 1,400-megawatt gas power plant that would have powered a data centre in the rural community of Olds, where 900 people out of a population of about 9,500 were given standing to speaking out on the project.
The data centre and gas plant. proposed by Synapse Real Estate Corp., would have been a “threat to our health, to our financial health, to our children’s future, to the future of Olds as a community,” Olds resident Carol Edwards, a retired finance professor at Simon Fraser University, told The Energy Mix. “There was absolutely no doubt in our minds that this would be the death of our town, that nobody would want to live here, no one would want to buy our houses, and this place would become a ghost town.”
The Heatmap poll by Embold Research found that three-quarters of Americans would oppose a local data centre project, with 60% saying they would strongly oppose it. Those numbers reflect a steady increase from 42% last August, to 51% in February, to 70% in May.
“The shift against the facilities is represented across age, gender, income, partisan ID, and the rural-urban divide,” Heatmap writes. “Data centres are 43 points underwater with Republicans, 65 points underwater with independents, and 75 points underwater with Democrats.”
The trend is particularly powerful among rural voters who’ve “skewed more Republican over the past decade,” with whom local data centres are now 63 points underwater—meaning that number of respondents who oppose them is now 63 percentage points higher than those who support them. The projects are only doing marginally better with urban and suburban voters.
The shift has U.S. politicians either embracing the public rage or scrambling to catch up with it. In Democratic Party primaries earlier this month, Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed and House of Representatives nominee Will Lawrence, a co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, both won their races with campaigns that emphasized their opposition to local data centre development, Politico reported at the time. Kansas gubernatorial nominee Cindy Holscher won her campaign after shifting her position and calling for a statewide data centre moratorium, while Tennessee House nominee Justin Pearson has been a sharp opponent all along.
“People really effing hate data centres,” El-Sayed told an event last month.
This week, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro “enacted new rules that effectively halt any new data centres that face opposition from local officials,” Politico reports. That’s a big pivot for Shapiro, who’s considered a possible presidential nominee in 2028 and “has gone from wooing tech companies a year ago to calling for action against “greedy developers.” His Republican opponent for governor, state Treasurer Stacy Garrity, is calling for an outright ban.
Other Republicans are calling for “guardrails” on data centre development “protect skeptical communities from unchecked AI growth, as well as the rollback of industry tax breaks,” Semafor writes. Donald Trump said Wednesday the industry “could use a little public relations help,” after introducing a ratepayer protection pledge in March that would have developers paying for the hundreds or thousands of megawatts of electricity the centres demand.
Earlier this month, Allie Rosenbluth, campaign manager at Oil Change Action, said rising energy costs due to U.S. liquefied natural gas exports and data centre development are shifting the dynamics in the midterm campaign.
“People are really starting to connect the dots that energy affordability and climate are major issues,” Rosenbluth told The Mix. “They’re experiencing it in their energy bills, and they’re also experiencing it if they live next to a data centre or an LNG export terminal. So these things are top of mind to voters.”
Recent polling in Canada suggest the fierce opposition to the Synapse project in Olds is the leading edge of a bigger trend. In a Nanos Research survey for the Globe and Mail, released this week, 64% of respondents said they would oppose or somewhat oppose financial incentives for data centre development.
Opposition was a bit stronger—43.1% against, and 24% somewhat opposed—among Canadians aged 18 to 34. “If you’re a 20-something Canadian, and you’re hearing that the government wants to promote AI data centres, you might be wondering whether the government is investing in something that will put you out of a job,” Nanos founder Nik Nanos told the Globe.
Last month, 81% of participants in a Leger poll said they were worried that data centres would lead to higher power bills, while 79% were concerned about their energy consumption, water use, and greenhouse gas emissions, The Canadian Press reported at the time. At the same time, 46% said domestic data centres would give Canada more control over its digital footprint, and 44% said they would support data centre development in their provinces, compared to 42% opposed.
In June, 68% of respondents told the Angus Reid Institute that AI and tech companies should be subject to heavy regulation, even if it slowed down development, although 74% said they doubted governments could keep up with the technology.
This story is part of The Energy Mix’s partnership with Small Change Fund.
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