OpenAI, Blackstone, SoftBank, QTS and major construction unions have formed a multimillion-dollar coalition that will push state and local governments toward stricter development standards rather than moratoriums as opposition to new data centers grows over electricity, water, environmental and community impacts.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
Some of the nation’s largest artificial intelligence companies, infrastructure investors and construction unions are joining forces to influence the next phase of the data center debate, creating a well-funded coalition that plans to campaign for regulations allowing projects to continue while opposing broad construction moratoriums.
The American Infrastructure Alliance will initially concentrate on Texas, Georgia, Ohio, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Indiana and South Carolina as state legislatures and local governments consider tighter restrictions on the rapidly expanding facilities. The coalition intends to work with public officials on standards governing issues including electricity infrastructure, water use, environmental protections and community costs during 2027 legislative sessions, according to Axios.
OpenAI, Blackstone, QTS and SoftBank are among the companies participating alongside organized labor. The broader membership also includes CoreWeave, Prologis, Digital Realty, SB Energy, Skybox, Rowan, Related Digital, American Real Estate Partners and PowerHouse Data Centers, according to the alliance’s launch announcement.
The alliance describes itself as a partnership intended to establish enforceable state and local guardrails while preserving continued construction. Its work is scheduled to extend through the 2027 state legislative sessions rather than focus primarily on the 2026 elections.
The campaign will be substantial. An alliance spokesperson described it to the Daily Caller News Foundation as a “high eight-figure campaign,” although the organization has not disclosed an exact budget.
“AIA will support standards that ensure that operators pay for the energy and infrastructure needed, protecting households, ratepayers, and local communities from added costs,” the spokesperson said in a report detailing the coalition’s plans. “More expansive guidelines are forthcoming.”
Construction unions have a direct economic stake in whether the large facilities continue to be built. Data centers require extensive electrical, plumbing, cooling, steel and other infrastructure during construction, providing work for trades represented by several of the organizations joining the alliance.
“Blanket bans on necessary infrastructure projects would set back our economy and threaten good middle-class jobs,” Kenneth Cooper, international president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, told Axios.
Along with the IBEW, labor participants include the United Association of Union Plumbers and Pipefitters, International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers, International Association of Heat and Frost Insulators and Allied Workers, International Association of Iron Workers, Ohio State Building and Construction Trades Council and ACT Ohio.
QTS, a data center operator owned by Blackstone, is also among the alliance’s principal corporate participants.
“Responsible growth requires clear expectations for everyone involved,” QTS co-CEO Tag Greason told Axios.
The alliance is emerging as resistance to large-scale data center construction grows across the country. Opponents have focused on the enormous electrical loads required by AI computing facilities, along with water consumption, noise, land use, pollution and the possibility that households could bear infrastructure costs created by industrial users.
Food & Water Watch, which advocates for stopping new hyperscale projects while their effects are studied, argues that promises of construction employment do not resolve those concerns.
Mitch Jones, the organization’s managing director of policy and litigation, described data center construction jobs as “transitory and fleeting.”
“Once centers are constructed, very few jobs remain in the facilities themselves,” Jones said. “Our research has found that as of 2024 there were only 23,000 people working permanently in data centers across the country.”
“The point of a moratorium is to allow for rigorous study to determine if this industry can ever be regulated safely,” Jones added. “This is truly an open question.”
Jones also argued that requiring companies to “pay its own way” or “bring its own power” would not resolve concerns involving noise, air pollution, water contamination and the conversion of farmland.
That position is part of a broader organized campaign against further expansion. Food & Water Watch said in June that more than 520 organizations from 48 states had signed a letter seeking a nationwide halt on approval and construction of new hyperscale data centers, while a new coalition was organizing opposition at the local, state and federal levels.
Pressure is also building in Congress.
Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced legislation in March that would impose an immediate federal moratorium on AI data centers until national safeguards addressing economic, environmental, utility and technology risks are established. Their proposal has not become law.
State governments are pursuing different approaches, with Texas emerging as one of the alliance’s most important battlegrounds.
Gov. Greg Abbott on Aug. 3 ordered Texas utility regulators to conduct a comprehensive verification and audit of every data center advancing through the Electric Reliability Council of Texas interconnection process. Abbott directed the Public Utility Commission of Texas and ERCOT to finish those reviews before affected projects move forward and said projects failing to satisfy state and regulatory requirements should be denied grid connections.
The scale of pending demand illustrates the concern.
ERCOT was considering more than 474 gigawatts in requests for new grid connections when Abbott issued the directive — more than five times the grid’s record peak demand — and approximately 90% of those requests involved data centers, according to the governor’s office.
Texas officials are asking developers to disclose how much infrastructure they expect taxpayers or ratepayers to support, how much power they will generate themselves, how much electricity they expect to consume and whether their projects will depend on local water supplies.
“Data centers must pay for their own electric infrastructure, add power instead of only adding demand, reuse their own water, reduce the cost of electricity for Texans, not disrupt residential neighborhoods, and eliminate reliance on outdated taxpayer-funded incentives,” Abbott press secretary Andrew Mahaleris said Sept. 22.
Despite its opposition to construction moratoriums, the alliance’s Texas operation is positioning itself in support of many of Abbott’s proposed conditions. Its Texas campaign says development should include accountability for water consumption, electrical capacity and environmental conservation and states that developers should pay for grid upgrades associated with their projects.
The coalition is attempting a similar strategy in Ohio, where its own polling suggests that public resistance to data centers is substantial but can change depending on the conditions attached to a project.
An August survey of 800 registered Ohio voters conducted by UpONE Insights for the Infrastructure Alliance of Ohio found that 67% viewed data centers unfavorably, compared with 18% who viewed them favorably. Seventy-four percent opposed construction of a data center near their community. The survey reported a margin of error of plus or minus 3.46 percentage points.
Those attitudes changed after respondents were presented with a package of promised safeguards and benefits. When told companies would cover their infrastructure costs, create jobs, produce tax revenue for schools and services, improve broadband and the electric grid and protect electric bills and property taxes, support for construction reached 60%, compared with 34% opposition. Because those figures came after respondents were given a favorable description of potential benefits, they measure reaction to that particular framing rather than unconditional support for data center development.
Pennsylvania has also tightened its approach.
Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, who had promoted Amazon’s planned $20 billion data center investment in Pennsylvania in 2025, issued an executive order in August establishing tougher requirements for developers. The changes include stronger community-engagement standards and removal of data centers from a state fast-track permitting program, although Shapiro stopped short of imposing a moratorium, according to Axios.
The result is an increasingly complex political fight in which technology companies seeking computing capacity, investors financing enormous infrastructure projects, construction unions seeking jobs, state officials protecting electric grids and water supplies, and activists demanding construction freezes are converging on the same policy question.
The American Infrastructure Alliance’s answer is to accept stricter rules while resisting blanket bans.
Its members are betting that commitments requiring developers to fund their own infrastructure, protect residential ratepayers, manage water demands and provide measurable local benefits can preserve public support for construction.
Groups seeking moratoriums argue that those conditions do not answer larger questions about the cumulative environmental, economic and social effects of a rapidly expanding industry.
With AI computing requirements continuing to drive demand for additional electricity and physical infrastructure, those competing approaches are now moving from individual local disputes into coordinated state and national campaigns — with both sides preparing for a larger legislative fight in 2027.
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