Americans grow more worried about AI’s environmental toll, poll finds

About half of Americans, 53%, are “extremely” or “very” concerned about the environmental impacts of artificial intelligence, up from 41% last year, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago. Democrats are driving much of the increase in environmental concern, though the poll also reveals broader worries about the local impact of data centers that power AI and cloud computing.

“We’re undertaking a massive experiment in real time, and I don’t think there’ll be any putting the milk back in the bottle. Change is scary, and I think some of that is being reflected here,” said Michael Greenstone, who directs the University of Chicago institute that collaborated on the survey.

About two-thirds of Democrats say they are “extremely” or “very” concerned about how AI will affect the environment, up from about half in 2025. By contrast, about half of independents and about 4 in 10 Republicans are highly concerned.

Republicans see more benefits in data centers than Democrats do. About a quarter of U.S. adults say data centers are “extremely” or “very” beneficial for technological advancement, and about 2 in 10 say the same about job creation. About one-quarter say the centers are “not very” or “not at all” beneficial for technological advancement, and about a third don’t see a benefit for job creation.

“I see a huge increase in the number of temporary construction workers that are coming to areas, which is vitally important to the U.S. economy,” said Eriech Tapia, a 30-year-old Republican from Arlington, Virginia, who works in higher education advocacy and policy.

About 6 in 10 Americans support limiting the number of new data centers that can be built, including most Democrats and Republicans.

“I think that decisions are being made for the company, not for the community that they’re being built in,” said Nancy Antunes, a 60-year-old retired Democrat from Waltham, Massachusetts.

There are thousands of data centers in the U.S., with construction planned for more, including smaller conventional centers as well as larger hyperscale ones built to serve AI’s added processing needs. Virginia and Texas have the most facilities currently in operation. Other top contenders include California, Ohio and New York.

While 87% of existing data centers are in urban areas, most new data centers are planned for rural areas, according to a Pew Research Center analysis from earlier this year.

A recent United Nations University report predicted that data centers’ environmental footprint, which already rivals some of the world’s largest countries, will grow rapidly as AI is more widely adopted.

A majority of Americans are “extremely” or “very” concerned about the impact of data centers on electricity prices or the water supply in the communities where they are built.

“There’s a lot of water usage by AI data centers that’s taking away from other things like agriculture and farmers and places that really need it, and people who really need it,” said Gedeon Kebede, a 21-year-old computer science student from Cincinnati, Ohio, who is a Democrat.

Data centers’ use of water to cool AI chips and computers is “nationally modest but potentially locally decisive,” Fengqi You, an energy systems engineer at Cornell University, said in an email. While data centers aren’t the U.S.’ largest water consumers, a single large campus can still place stress on a smaller municipal area.

The centers are also powered by tremendous amounts of electricity, particularly larger ones. Data centers could account for 11.8% of the U.S.’ electricity consumption by 2030, according to a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory report.

“We’re talking about building electric infrastructure on a scale of entire cities, or in some cases, entire states just to serve one data center,” said Erik Nordman, director of Michigan State University’s Institute of Public Utilities.

About two-thirds of U.S. adults support requiring data centers to use clean energy sources, such as wind or solar, to supply their electricity needs. About 8 in 10 Democrats support this, along with 56% of Republicans.

Overall, Americans are more worried about the environmental impact of AI than other industries with a substantial environmental footprint. Only about 3 in 10 U.S. adults are highly concerned about the impact of meat production or air travel.

Still, some Americans say data center worries feel distant. Mary Fisher, 68, hasn’t seen any come up in her Jacksonville, Florida, neighborhood.

“You know, it hasn’t come across my desk as something I should be concerned about,” said Fisher, who is retired and identifies as a Republican.

Kebede said he feels pressured to use artificial intelligence despite his concerns about the technology. He said he still wants to be a competitive applicant for the jobs of the future.

“I think a lot of people just feel that it’s very much a bubble,” he said. “Ultimately, when it pops, it’s going to be very detrimental to everyone, whether you bought into the AI hype or not.”

The AP-NORC poll of 3,424 adults was conducted July 6-24, using a combined sample of interviews from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel and interviews from opt-in online panels. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 2.2 percentage points.