Amazon's $20 Billion AI Data Centers Under Fire In PA
Environmental advocates and analysts are sounding the alarm over Amazon's $20 billion investment in a pair of artificial intelligence data centers in Pennsylvania, pointing to shallow, short-term economic gains in exchange for an overloading of the electric grid and runaway carbon emissions.
The proposal is pushed across the aisle by both Gov. Josh Shapiro and U.S. Sen. David McCormick, who have called it a "historic investment." But critics say that elected officials have left many questions unanswered while whitewashing the details, and that Amazon will be the only true beneficiary.
"These centers do not exist in a vacuum," Sierra Club Pennsylvania Chapter Deputy Director Sarah Corcoran said in a statement. "They bring with them increased strain on the local power grids, a need for additional power sources, increased levels of air and water pollution, and decreased peace of mind."
The first campuses will be in Salem Township in Luzerne County and in Falls Township in Bucks County, Amazon announced in June. Other communities will be identified later.
The facilities will bring 1,250 new jobs, including data center engineers, network specialists, engineering operations managers, and security specialists, Amazon said. Gov. Shapiro has called it a boon for the state.
"With this historic announcement, we're creating opportunity for our workers, generating new revenue for our local communities, and ensuring the future of AI runs right through Pennsylvania," Shapiro said in June.
But many of the jobs are short-term construction jobs, and the facilities themselves require comparatively little manpower to run.
"These data centers and their jobs claims are a dangerous bait and switch," Carrie Santoro, the executive director of the grassroots nonprofit Reporting has concluded that data centers provide poor quality jobs, and at numbers drastically lower than the bombastic claims these corporations make."
Meanwhile, the power the data centers require is enormous. Average U.S. electricity generation costs could skyrocket by 8 percent by 2030 absent radical policy change, according to a June 2025 study from
Researchers also expect data centers increase greenhouse gas emissions from power generation by 30 percent over the next five years. Cooling requirements for vast supercomputers also cause carbon emissions, raising a similar concern to cryptocurrency mining.
"Pennsylvania power will be used for these projects, but the only ones to benefit will be the companies bulldozing their way through our local governmental bodies and our farm fields," Corcoran added.
The rise of AI systems over the past year has led to enormous growth in the market and put pressure on competing tech companies to improve their massed computing ability. But much like federal policy was not ready for the swarm of changes which AI itself brought to business, politics, and life, neither have local governments been prepared for the sudden unique demands of energy-seeking tech companies.
Specifically, the Sierra Club and others say that Amazon, Microsoft, xAI, and the world's largest tech companies take advantage of the limited local ordinances that exist on the construction of data centers.
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An exact opening date for the Pennsylvania facilities has not yet been announced.
