Demand for computing power is fuelling a massive surge in investment in data centres worldwide. McKinsey estimates investment in data centres will reach US$6.7 trillion (A$10 trillion) by 2030. Recent industry estimates suggest that more than US$1 trillion will be invested in the United States over the next five years. The scale of capital expenditures is evidenced by projects such as the massive Stargate initiative announced by President Donald Trump at the White House, alongside executives from OpenAI, Oracle, and Softbank, the day after his inauguration, and subsequent multibillion-dollar announcements by tech firms including Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Google in recent months.
As the boom expands, public scrutiny of industry plans and promises is increasing across the US. Concerns over environmental impacts, demands on energy infrastructure, and other economic and social justice considerations are increasingly the subject of contentious debate at the state and local levels. Technology firms and data centre developers face a thicket of zoning, utility, and taxation questions, some of which are the subject of new regulations and legislation.
In the US, one industry group is increasingly at the centre of these policy debates, an investigation led by Agência Pública and the Centro Latinoamericano de Investigación Periodística (CLIP), alongside Tech Policy Press, has found. As the stakes in the fight over data centres increase, the Data Center Coalition is spending more money on behalf of its corporate members to lobby governments and public entities. And it is engaging in new tactics to shift perceptions of the industry among key constituencies, including legislators and the public.
Growing alongside the industry
Founded in 2019, the Data Center Coalition (DCC) is a member association that bills itself as “the voice” for the data centre industry. Its members include the major technology firms driving the AI boom, such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Meta, as well as data centre operators and related infrastructure service providers, including Stack Infrastructure, Digital Realty, Coreweave, and Oracle. Located in Leesburg, Virginia, a town in Loudoun County — known as “Data Centre Alley” for its massive concentration of more than 200 data centres — the DCC advocates for its members at multiple levels of government.
Tax filings indicate that the organisation is growing. It claimed over US$2.5 million in revenue in its 2023 tax filing, up from US$582,558 the previous year. In a statement, Josh Levi, president of the DCC, told Tech Policy Press that the organisation now has 15 full-time staff. Evidence of its efforts is emerging across the country, particularly on issues related to tax incentives and energy infrastructure. For instance, in recent months, Levi testified in a US Congressional hearing on the economics of AI and data centre power consumption, penned a guest column in an Ohio newspaper proclaiming the economic benefits of data centres to the state, and made an appearance at a local Board of County Commissioners meeting in Calvert, Maryland, to discuss, among other things, the potential for local tax revenues from data centres. In Mississippi, Levi told a local newspaper that there is little downside to data centre investment. “From my perspective, there aren’t any negatives,” he told Jackson’s Clarion Ledger.
