Residents of Philadelphia's Grays Ferry neighborhood — a community already scarred by decades of pollution from what was once the East Coast's largest oil refinery — are now rallying against proposed AI data center construction in their area.
Over 100 people gathered at Philadelphia's City Hall on September 15 for the kick-off rally of the "No Data Centers in Philly" campaign. Among the speakers was Shawmar Pitts, managing co-director of environmental justice group Philly Thrive, who grew up next to the Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery that shut down after a 2019 explosion.
"I read the information they had on the table about how living near the refinery affects you, and I'm looking at all the sicknesses on this paper, and I'm like, 'My mother has this, my sister has that, my next-door neighbor suffers from this' — every house, someone has something on that list," Pitts told TechCrunch.
City officials have identified two potential data center sites: one in Northeast Philadelphia and one in Grays Ferry. While no formal construction proposals have been made, community opposition has been swift. Sonya Sanders, board president of Philly Thrive, told the rally that her husband died of rare bone cancer in 2020, which she attributes to refinery emissions.
The Philadelphia fight is part of a broader national backlash against AI data center construction. BloombergNEF projects that by 2035, U.S. data centers will consume more natural gas than Germany and Japan combined — nearly double their estimate from nine months ago. Additional data center demand is expected to generate an extra 1 million metric tons of greenhouse gas pollution daily.
Data center moratoriums have been approved in Denver, Indianapolis, Asheville, Charlotte, and Reno. New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed an executive order temporarily halting new permits for large projects, saying: "Progress shouldn't arrive with a higher utility bill, deleted water supply, or noise pollution."
