They even have concerns,” Smith said, as a slide showed headlines from various news outlets about opposition to data centers. But higher demand for electricity—including from data centers, which can also be expensive to connect to the grid—plays a role. The political divide against data centers appears to be bipartisan. It removed a variety of environmental protections for data centers, including water protections, expedited the review of chemicals involved in their use, and encouraged their development on federal land. Microsoft, which has around 100 data centers planned or under construction across the country, has met with some local pushback to some of its projects.