Developers just walked away from a $1 billion Howell Township data center after months of community pushback, and the same anti–data center sentiment is now targeting projects across Michigan, including a 24 MW Deep Green facility in Lansing.
The political backdrop is mixed: the state has expanded tax breaks and the governor is pushing a 1,400 MW Oracle/OpenAI campus in Saline, even as local boards demand more transparency about grid impacts and clean energy goals.
Deep Green is pitching its Lansing site as “green” with closed-loop cooling, restaurant-level water use, and waste-heat reuse with the local utility, but residents don’t buy the promised 15 long-term tech jobs or broader economic benefits.
Opposition centers on water stress, noise, land use, and the sense that AI data centers extract power and resources from rural and urban communities without meaningful local upside.
Ingham County’s nonbinding resolution is an early template for requiring detailed disclosure on power sourcing and rate impacts before approvals, signaling more friction and slower timelines for new AI-capable capacity.
Even relatively modest, efficiency-focused builds like Deep Green’s are getting caught in the same backlash as hyperscale GPU campuses, which matters for anyone counting on Michigan for fast, low-cost AI infrastructure expansion.
Worth reading for a ground-level view of how local politics and resource concerns are starting to shape the real deployment path for AI data centers.
Source: Anti-data center Capitol protest comes amid opposition to Lansing project | City Pulse
