On the face of it, one might not think that there are many similarities between the tech and fossil fuel industries. One is infamous for its long-documented record of denying and delaying the need for climate action, while the other—occupied by leading firms like Google, Meta and Microsoft—paints itself as at the forefront of environmental sustainability, loudly pronouncing its corporate climate commitments. Yet the two industries are becoming increasingly intertwined.
The fossil fuel industry sees data centres’ urgent and voracious appetite for energy as an untapped market that can lock in a new generation of fossil fuel infrastructure. Conversely, as the data centre industry’s insatiable appetite for energy has run up against grid constraints, it has looked to on-site fossil fuel generation.
As data centre expansion has met growing public resistance, the data centre industry has replicated many of the same arguments and tactics of the fossil fuel industry to beat back critics. As both industries navigate the AI investment boom and the emerging challenges that have grown out of it, their interests have begun to align, creating a strange reciprocal relationship in concert with the AI arms race and the massive amounts of energy required to fuel it. While this relationship is most advanced in the United States, we are seeing early signals of a similar relationship developing in Canada as well.
The need for speed
With the AI race increasingly premised on the ability to scale up training models and size of compute, companies and the policymakers that support them are assigning the highest priority to the speed of constructing data centres. Rather than wait in the queue to be added to existing electricity grids, data centre developers are demanding the right to develop their own on-site sources of generation “behind-the-meter” to hasten development. Despite early promises to opt for renewable power, the data centre industry has chosen speed over sustainability, with the vast majority of this on-site generation via natural gas, due to the speed with which it can be built and its perceived reliability.
Indeed, the data centre construction boom is creating an equivalent natural gas boom across the United States. Estimates are that data centres alone have helped to nearly triple the demand for gas-fired power in the U.S. over the past two years. Build-out of gas infrastructure has followed demand, with new natural gas pipeline construction “looking at its biggest growth surge in nearly 20 years.”
Recognizing that data centres represent a new and growing market for their products, the gas industry in particular has been keen to sell itself as the solution to data centre energy constraints. Statements like the one below from the gas industry advocacy group Natural Allies for a Clean Energy Future (NACE) spokesperson and former U.S. Representative Tim Ryan are emblematic of this industry talking point :
To meet demand and continue to lower emissions, we need a pragmatic energy mix since renewables alone cannot yet match the reliability and scale needed to power the data centres and homes alike. Natural gas is the best backstop because it can be dispatched instantly with plants able to turn on and off within minutes, allowing the grid to keep up when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing.
Major oil companies are recognizing the potential of data centres as a new market, with both Exxon and Chevron announcing plans to provide gas-fired generation coupled with carbon capture technology to data centre customers. This also appears to be a development welcomed by the Canadian gas industry and the Government of Canada, which identified a key “public policy benefit” of data centre expansion as providing new markets for Canadian gas.
Unsurprisingly, the data centre industry also sees on-site gas generation as the quickest route to supplying its urgent and growing energy needs. The industry’s premier trade association in the United States, the Data Center Coalition (DCC)—whose members include big tech firms like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Meta, and Google as well as other major data centre developers and operators like Vantage, Equinix and Stack Infrastructure—has made common cause with the fossil fuel industry in lobbying for expedited permits and looser regulations for energy projects and infrastructure. Individual data centre developers have also lobbied (so far unsuccessfully) for exemptions from the Clean Air Act in order to allow gas and diesel generators to emit beyond allowable limits.
This synergy of political and economic interests have also resulted in shared membership in the new A.I. advocacy organization, the Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure Coalition (AIIC) led by former Senator Kyrsten Sinema. Launched in November 2025, the AIIC boasts a membership that includes oil and gas providers like Exxon and Duke Energy, tech companies like Google, Microsoft and Meta, as well as data centre developers like Digital Realty and QTS.
The AIIC, as well as the DCC have been vocal backers of President Trump’s “A.I. Action Plan” which promotes expedited energy infrastructure and environmental deregulation to speed data centre construction and on-site generation. Similar lobbying efforts are also underway in Canada, with energy and power generation companies like Capital Power Corporation, Innio, TransAlta and Pembina Pipeline attempting to influence federal regulatory policy on energy policy and data centres.
A Very Public Problem
The political organization of the data centre industry has grown in concert with emerging economic and political challenges to its continued expansion. According to a Public Citizen report, the number of data centre lobbyists in the U.S. has grown by 497 per cent in the last three years, from a mere 68 in 2022 to more than 400 in 2025. The industry has also created its own Political Action Committee (PAC) in Virginia, home to the country’s largest concentration of data centres. As the density of data centre development in the state has roiled public opposition to the industry’s continued expansion, the VA Digital Infrastructure PAC has made thousands of dollars worth of campaign contributions to state legislators in the hopes of staving off potentially restrictive legislation.
One of the biggest growing constraints to the industry’s continued expansion is public opinion. As data centre construction has exploded across the United States, so has public opposition. Facing an increasingly recalcitrant public, the data centre industry has come to the realization that public opinion is just as effective a constraint on their growth as energy access. Indeed, the industry has been consumed with reclaiming the narrative from opposition, which they argue is driven by misinformation.Steven Lim, Vice-President of marketing at NTT Global Data Centers acknowledges that “it’s time we get organized as an industry and tell our story instead of letting others control the narrative” .
The industry has responded to the backlash with high profile pronouncements aimed at addressing public concerns. Executives (alongside with President Trump) announced a voluntary “ratepayer protection pledge” to absorb more of the energy costs, stating that “the American people should not be footing the bill for the benefit of private companies.” Microsoft has gone even further with its ‘Community First AI Strategy’ which vows to pay higher electricity rates, commits to “replenish more of your water than we use,” promises to forgoes local government tax subsidies and end the use of non-disclosure agreements (NDA) with local governments.
While these pledges are voluntary and non-binding, they do signal that the industry is aware of how it is negatively perceived by the public.
The industry has also undertaken a series of advocacy and public relations campaigns. Meta spent $6.4 million on a series of advertisements highlighting the positive economic benefits of Meta data centres that have reversed the fortunes of rural communities. The DCC has been airing digital ads, distributing direct mailers and sending promotional text messages from 2024 to the present through “Virginia Connects,” a 501(c)4) not-for-profit organization formed by the DCC to “educate and engage with Virginians about the benefits that data centers provide statewide and in local communities.” The DCC also operates an informational and promotional website that emphasizes the necessity of data centres to the modern digital economy.
Recycled Talking Points
These advertisements and public relations materials recycle arguments that have long been staples of the fossil fuel industry. The first is the notion that data centres—and the data they store—are the foundation of modern conveniences and essential services like health information, instant communication, business logistics, transportation, emergency services and even national security.
As Amazon puts it, “almost everything that happens online depends on data centres. Without them, the internet as we know it wouldn’t exist.” Such an argument would be very familiar to fossil fuel industry advocates. Conflating petroleum and petrochemicals with the luxuries of modernity and the convenience and abundance of the “American way of life” has been a long-standing argument of the fossil fuel industry. The implicit warning underlying such arguments is that to forgo fossil fuels (or data centres) is to forgo modernity.
The second strategy dusted off from the oil industry playbook is what scholars of climate rhetoric call “technological optimism.” By holding out the promise of some future technological innovation that will ride to the rescue of the climate (like carbon capture), the oil industry has been able to scuttle the implementation of more aggressive climate action. The data centre industry adapts this by claiming that it is data centres themselves—and the AI models they train—that will ride to the rescue of the climate. Such arguments caution against excessive regulation for fear of stifling the innovation that will resolve these contradictions somewhere in the future.
Convincing the community
Beyond general efforts to sway public opinion, convincing the communities where these facilities are actually being built has become in the words of OpenAI, “mission critical.” As communities have increasingly resisted the data centre industry, it has increasingly drawn from the oil and gas industry’s community relations playbook. Indeed, the fossil fuel industry has encouraged the adoption of these practices with Mike Sommers, president of the American Petroleum Institute (API) warning that data centres are experiencing the same community backlash as hydraulic fracturing (better known as fracking) and need to combat it with the same tools.
Community engagement enables firms not only to showcase their contributions to the community but also to proactively manage risk and respond to community concerns before they can catalyze into organized opposition. Company-sponsored information sessions during the early stages of a development, designed to identify key stakeholders as well as potential risks are becoming commonplace. Community investments by data centre developers in local infrastructure and essential services are usually widely promoted by firms. Similarly, many data centre employees are provided with paid time off in exchange for community volunteering – helping to promote and humanize the company. Examples abound of collaborations between data centre developers and local schools and colleges to encourage local workforce development (often for the data centre industry itself) as well as to demonstrate a long-term commitment to the community. While obviously not as advanced as in the U.S, we see similar community engagement efforts in Canada as developers fight to overcome entrenched community opposition.
It is obviously much too early to make any assessments on whether the adoption of these practices will temper the suspicions and distrust of the data centre industry that so many communities harbour. Moreover, these suspicions are often exacerbated by the industry’s continued penchant for commercial secrecy. Lobbying efforts by industry to block state legislative efforts at greater transparency only further disillusion the public that senses a widening gulf between the industry’s words and its deeds.
For many communities trying to deliberate over these projects, the lack of information from developers and from their own governments is perceived as profoundly undemocratic. However, if the data centre industry continues to lose public trust despite all these efforts, we may see the industry resort to more crude political influence tactics in order to weaken the responsiveness of politicians and regulators to public concerns. In fact, the industry has already become embroiled in local political corruption scandals and has shown no qualms using its wealth to back sympathetic politicians at the local and state level. The data centre industry’s growing collaboration with the most politically powerful industry in both the United States and Canada makes this possibility all the more concerning.
The oil and gas industry really has no peer in the field of corporate propaganda and political influence. Learning at the knee of such a mentor makes it all the more important that the data centre industry be subject to robust democratic constraints and strictly regulated in the public interest.
About the author
Simon Enoch
Simon Enoch is the senior researcher for Saskatchewan issues and policies. He holds a BA in Political Science, a Masters in Labour Studies and a PhD in Communication & Culture. Active in both the labour movement and media reform efforts, Simon has published in a variety of academic journals and other news media. He lives in Regina, Saskatchewan.
