The swelling interest in data centers in Oklahoma is echoed all across the U.S. and a new study into how they’re received in cities and towns shows the reaction of Oklahomans is no different than what other Americans are saying.
In the first large-scale study of its kind, two researchers, one at the University of Michigan and the other at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found a 900% increase in the number local government dealings across the U.S. that dealt with data center projects from 2023 to 2026.
The two collected 150,000 transcripts of meetings in 48 states between 2007 and 2026. What did they find?
“We show that the primary tension in local policymaking is between the economic development potential of data centers and expected local costs such as noise, utility rate increases, and environmental impact,” wrote Adam Rauh in Michigan and Mason Reece at MIT.
Their study showed a fivefold increase in the last ten years of data center investment across the U.S.
“This pattern shows no sign of slowing—current projections anticipated more than an additional $1 trillion will be spent on data center investment before 2030,” they wrote. The two admitted their study didn’t offer any answer in one subject.
“–we know little about how local communities are systematically grappling with the increase in data center construction.”
But they did find that local government attention to data centers has dramatically increased in recent years.
“Since the beginning of 2023, we find local government attention to data centers has increased by more than a factor of 10. Nearly 10% of local government meetings discussed data centers since March 2026, up from less than 1% of meetings between January and March 23,” the two stated.
“We identify 1,707 meetings that discuss data centers and use text analysis to assign whether each data center mentions topics related to community costs, economic development, land use and infrastructure, utilities and the environment and data center projects in other cities.”
Here’s what they found
To the surprise of few, they learned that speakers ten to be more positive when discussing the potential economic impacts of data centers, such as the prospect of new jobs. Most other concerns, wrote the two researchers, utilities, traffic, noise, sustainability and especially air quality—are much more negative.
“Finally, we show that opposition to data centers is driven by members of the public, rather than local officials,” stated their analysis, which also found that speaking members of the public are much less supportive of data centers than officials.
“This pattern is clear—as more members of the public speak in a given meeting, overall discussions about data centers become much more negative. In contrast, meeting discussions led only by local officials without community input discuss data centers in a more positive way.”