Climate Funders Convened A Data Center Forum. They Triggered A Reckoning.

An ambitious effort to hash out an agreement between tech companies, green groups and philanthropists on guardrails for data center development may be about to unravel amid infighting among environmentalists.

The Rockefeller Foundation, one of the country’s biggest climate funders, has been quietly supporting private convenings among major power players in the national data center brawl. The Responsible Data Center Collaborative it launched this summer includes participants from Google, Meta, Microsoft, Anthropic, Nvidia, the Chamber of Commerce and the Sierra Club and aims to craft a “national compact” ensuring projects benefit local economies, run on “affordable and reliable clean energy” and create good jobs, according to a group charter obtained by POLITICO.

But in recent days, more than 100 green groups and progressive organizations have raised sharp objections to the undertaking and the Natural Resources Defense Council has threatened to quit. The blowback has caused so much consternation that organizers called off a meeting of the group that was scheduled for this week, according to two people familiar with the effort who were granted anonymity to discuss private deliberations.

“The moment I was asked to participate, I realized it was a problem and I started organizing to expose the funders, to expose the others at the table, and to put pressure to dismantle this whole forum on so-called responsible data center development,” said Rania Masri, director of organizing and policy at the North Carolina Environmental Justice Network.

The infighting comes as Democrats are expected to make data center regulation a top policy target next year when they take control of Congress, governors’ mansions and state houses across the country. Voter outrage over the energy- and water-guzzling facilities helped drive their sweeping gains during the midterm elections from Texas toOhio.

Industry and elected officials at all levels of government are scrambling to respond to the public backlash — and the meetings had emerged as a key forum to bring together the major players to develop an agreement that could “influence industry practice, strengthen community decision-making, and provide a nonpartisan resource that policymakers and regulators can draw upon as they consider public policy,” according to the group charter.

But the battle over the Rockefeller-backed effort bespeaks a sharp divide among environmentalists and other data center critics over strategy: Should they negotiate with industry to craft rules protecting communities’ air and water, or fight development outright?

Environmental groups’ resistance began with concerns about what they say is insufficient participation from community groups.

On Friday, over 100 smaller climate and social justice groups, most of which aren’t involved in the meetings, called on two of the forum's funders — the Rockefeller Foundation and Invest in Our Future — to spike the effort, arguing it “is channeling attention towards false solutions that manage symptoms, while leaving the root inequities and staggering risks further entrenched.”

That same day the Hive Fund, a climate philanthropy group that supports the work of women of color and received a $60 million infusion from Mackenzie Scott last year, put out a statement criticizing the initiative as “top-down” and overly friendly to industry.

By Sunday, the Natural Resources Defense Council — one of the country’s largest and most deep-pocketed environmental groups — was threatening to back out of the collaborative unless organizers include more community groups.

“If community voices do not participate in the process; we will not participate in the process,” Julie Cerqueira, chief program officer at NRDC, said in a statement.

The accusation that the initiative is sidelining community groups is fretted with issues of race and power. Some activists argue that the NAACP’s data center framework should be the starting point for any future work involving the environmental community.

Organizers say they welcome the inclusion of more perspectives, including individuals seeking to stop data centers in their communities.

“As AI infrastructure is built at extraordinary speed and scale, communities should decide whether they want data centers and on what terms, with full visibility into the impacts and enough resources and expertise to negotiate from a position of strength rather than react project by project,” Melvin Felix, a spokesperson for Invest in our Future, a philanthropic group supported by an affiliate of the Rockefeller Foundation, said in a statement.

"IOF is committed to ensuring communities have that information and capacity, and we welcome ideas on how to strengthen this effort from organizations already working alongside communities on these issues,” Felix said.

The Rockefeller Foundation and Invest in Our Future declined to answer questions about the group on the record beyond Felix’s statement, but confirmed they received the letter criticizing the effort. The forums themselves have been led by the Convergence Center for Policy Resolution, a nonpartisan group that aims to solve public policy issues and which referred questions to Invest in Our Future.

In ablog post last week, the Rockefeller Foundation described the effort as part of its tradition of convening and collaborating with “unlikely partners” to address thorny policy issues. The post also stated that people’s concerns about data centers “are real and deserve to be heard.”

One of the people familiar with the forum granted anonymity said organizers are trying to respond to the concerns.

"They clearly received the message that things need to be done differently," the person said. "It’s a complex group to have in the room together, especially once we’re able to have the community voices we’ve been advocating for."

Spokespeople for Amazon, OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta did not address questions about specific policy ideas they hoped would come out of the forum, referring questions to the organizers and saying they were committed to responsible data center development.

OpenAI last week released its own data center framework, which asserts that projects' water and energy use should be public and that developers should cover the cost of grid investments. Anthropic last month also pledged to provide “millions of dollars” in community benefit agreements for cities and towns that host data centers.

Driving fissures

The fracas over the data center collaborative comes at the same time that deep fractures are forming within the environmental community and its Democratic allies over another high-stakes issue: the bipartisan Senate permitting bill.

That measure, negotiated by two of the chamber’s biggest environmental champions, aims to accelerate the build out of energy infrastructure in part by reducing environmental regulations.

Progressive groups argue both the data center forum and the permitting bill would short-circuit protections for communities and environmental resources.

“Similar to this permitting bill, they’re framing [the collaborative] as, ‘We’re legislating for communities’ benefit, and yet nowhere were communities involved or negotiated with,” said Mar Zepeda Salazar, legislative director at the Climate Justice Alliance, who is also a former Democratic staffer for the House Natural Resources Committee.

The fact that the pushback is targeted at major funders of environmental groups makes it particularly poignant.

The Rockefeller Foundation is one of the country’s biggest funders of climate work, with a $6 billion endowment. It has historically provided funding to the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters Education Fund. NRDC has received money from Invest in Our Future, an entity that distributes money from Rockefeller and other major climate funders including the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

Greens that have participated in the forum, like the Sierra Club, say they’ve done so with the clear intention of advancing protections for communities, preventing air and water pollution and stopping the build-out of natural gas plants to power data centers.

“A fundamental tenant of this convening is that communities have the right to decide if projects get built — something we strongly support,” Holly Bender, chief program officer at the Sierra Club, said in a statement. “We are clear that these are the values we’re bringing into these conversations, and we’ve also been clear that we need more people at the table, especially more community organizations.”

But LaTricea Adams, a community activist involved in local efforts to challenge SpaceXAI’s data center build-out around Memphis, Tennessee, said she felt “blindsided” by the inclusion of major tech companies at the forum meeting she attended last month.

She criticized what she described as a focus on powering data centers with clean energy, something she said does not reflect the reality in Memphis, where the use of gas-fired combustion turbines at massive data centers near residential neighborhoods hasdrawn fierce opposition and litigation.

“We don’t really get large philanthropy dollars, so I can’t lose what I didn’t have ... but I really don’t appreciate these backroom conversations that are happening,” said Adams, founder of the environmental justice group Young, Gifted and Green who also served on the Biden administration’s environmental justice advisory council. “At this point, I just want to work with community folks.”