Resilient Data Center Infrastructure Development Considerations in the AI Era

The digital economy is expanding and artificial intelligence (AI), cloud services, and high-performance computing are driving unprecedented demand for data centers in the United States. With private-sector investment accelerating, it is essential that data center infrastructure is deployed in a way that aligns with national economic security goals, promotes national resilience, maximizes domestic economic benefit, and considers community well-being.

Building Resilient Data Center Infrastructure with Smarter Energy and Planning

Currently, energy resilience is being prioritized, highlighted by recent federal initiatives to quadruple domestic nuclear generation capacity. However, comprehensive data center resilience planning must go further and address infrastructure siting risks, grid constraints, and community impacts. These are important considerations because unintended economic, environmental, and community outcomes (such as flooding or community disapproval of the project) can lead to project delays, increased construction costs, unexpected maintenance costs, and more. Moreover, diversity in data center operations and siting, driven by whether facilities primarily support AI model training, inference, or other applications, will also influence infrastructure needs and integrated assessment.

Legislative efforts, such as Texas SB6, which incentivizes the development of new natural gas plants explicitly to support data center growth, underscore how states are moving aggressively to secure dedicated power resources for these facilities. While such measures aim to bolster reliability, they also highlight the urgency of integrated planning to avoid lock-in to single-fuel dependencies and to fully account for environmental and community considerations.

Experts from our team identified key research and policy considerations that could help to guide data center infrastructure strategy development and mitigate risks that could otherwise lead to delays, cost escalations, or community resistance.

Economic Considerations: Aligning Data Center Infrastructure Growth with National Workforce and Industrial Strategy

• Domestic Supply Chain and Job Creation Potential: A clear picture of job creation potential is needed across the full lifecycle of data center deployment—including construction, operations, and upstream supply chains (e.g., advanced manufacturing, electrical equipment, network hardware).  

  For instance, Input-Output Analysis is a widely used modeling approach by economists to estimate the jobs, wage, and other economic impacts of infrastructure projects across the entire supply chain. Information provided by this type of analysis could support policy development, like the Buy America policy, industrial revitalization, and alignment with federal technology and innovation goals.

• Workforce Readiness: There is also an urgent need to assess whether the existing workforce can meet the domestic jobs required across the entire supply chain of data center and energy infrastructure expansion. Public and private sector players could work in partnership to project future labor demand and inform the design of sector-based training programs.

  Combining labor market analytics with forward-looking scenario planning will be useful in these assessments. Emphasis should be placed on high-quality job creation, and long-term regional capacity building.       

• Community Economic Impacts: Physical data center infrastructure investments should consider community-level effects on energy affordability, local property markets, and health-related expenditures. Energy analysts can estimate changes in electricity prices due to increased energy demand from data centers to help policymakers assess energy affordability.

  Recently, there have been growing calls for data centers to serve as “good grid citizens” by providing operational flexibility during periods of grid stress. Initial evidence suggests substantial system-level stress benefits on the grid. Economists may apply hedonic pricing or difference-in-differences approaches to evaluate how data center infrastructure influences property values over time, accounting for phased development.

  Beyond economic measures, there are also concerns that local governments often bear the responsibility for planning and data center infrastructure investments, such as roadway improvements or fire department training, that facilitate data center operation. Coordination with housing and development partners could help to evaluate impacts and explore mitigation strategies, including tax incentives, community benefit agreements, or affordability programs.

Data Center Infrastructure Resilience Planning: Minimizing Harm and Enhancing Stability

• Water Resource Stress: Although there has been a recent push for technologies like liquid cooling, legacy data center cooling and power generation can pose risks to regional water availability and water quality.

  Interagency assessments are needed to quantify water withdrawal, thermal pollution, and chemical discharge impacts—especially in water-stressed regions. For example, hydrological modelers may utilize water quality modeling to characterize the impacts of cooling water usage on surrounding streams and reservoirs. This may in turn inform policy tools such as federal permitting guidance and best practices frameworks.

  Some operators are adopting innovative approaches, such as Meta’s pledge to become water-positive by 2030, illustrating evolving strategies to offset water use through restoration and conservation initiatives.

• Data Center Infrastructure Resilience to Extreme Weather: Physical infrastructure resilience is a national security and economic imperative. Extreme weather vulnerability screenings could be a useful prerequisite for siting decisions, incorporating Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) hazard maps, Department of Energy (DOE) resilience data, and Department of Transportation (DOT) transportation risk data.

  Hydrometeorologists can perform site-specific precipitation and flood-risk hazard assessments for proposed facilities. This can inform both public infrastructure funding and guidance for private developers.

• Local Air Quality and Public Health: Data center projects involving fossil energy generation may result in emissions of particulate matter and mercury, which can negatively impact human health. It is important to assess potential health burdens on nearby communities and ensure appropriate safeguards.

  Analyses involving dispersion modeling, time-series analysis, cumulative risk assessments, source apportionment modeling, or the use of remote sensing and low-cost sensor networks are useful for assessing cumulative impacts in areas already overburdened by air and water pollution. 

Social Considerations of Data Center Infrastructure: Building Public Trust

• Community Sentiment: Community engagement can be a strong determinant of project success. Project leads and developers would benefit from coordinating to adopt consistent community engagement standards that prioritize early outreach, clear communication, and iterative feedback processes.

  Methodologies to support this may include stakeholder mapping to identify key actors, survey research to quantify community perspectives, and qualitative methods—such as interviews or focus groups—to capture local insights. Implementing these approaches can reduce permitting delays, ensure local benefits are realized, and strengthen public trust.  

• Local Workforce and Economic Opportunities: To enhance public support and maximize local benefits, project plans can include strategies for local workforce development, and small business participation. This may involve labor market assessments to identify skills gaps. Further, partnering with regional workforce boards, community colleges, and local governments can ensure that infrastructure investments translate into meaningful economic gains for surrounding communities.

Shaping Data Center Infrastructure for Resilience, Community, and Economic Strength

As data center infrastructure rapidly scales to meet the demands of the next-generation digital economy, stakeholders have a unique opportunity to shape this growth in ways that enhance national resilience, support robust local economies, and earn the confidence of communities.

Integrating rigorous economic analysis, proactive resilience planning, and thoughtful social engagement into infrastructure strategy could help mitigate risks, unlock broader value, and position the United States to sustain leadership in a dynamic and increasingly digital world.