From the agricultural farmlands of western New York, to the pristine hills of the Finger Lakes, to the seashores of Lengthy Island: a slate of brand name new AI information facilities are within the technique of connecting to New York’s energy grid and awaiting approval whereas company giants and authorities officers haphazardly push by pesky environmental laws and construct out the infrastructure essential to energy them.
Of the 25 tasks added to New York’s energy grid interconnection queue this yr, over half of them are information facilities. These “energy-intensive” tasks are within the technique of connecting to the grid and can drastically improve energy utilization; over 7000 megawatts (MW) by 2030. Simply 1 MW can energy round 1,000 properties for a yr in New York, in keeping with NYISO, New York’s electrical grid supervisor.
As of Nov. 28, 2025, the newest piece of fossil gas infrastructure wanted to maintain up with exponential energy necessities was formally authorised: the controversial North East Provide Enhancement (NESE) pipeline, a large pure gasoline pipeline set to pump over 400,000 dekatherms of fracked gasoline from Pennsylvania to New York. A final-ditch effort by the Pure Assets Protection Council (NRDC) for a rehearing on the choice was dismissed on Dec. 22, and building might want to start quickly to remain on monitor with the projected 2027 completion date.
Over a thousand individuals march throughout the Brooklyn Bridge over the summer time in protest of the NESE pipelinePhoto by Patrick Stachniak
The growth of those “hyperscaled” information facilities is basically pushed by or meant to be used by cryptocurrency mining, speculative A.I., army, or fossil gas corporations. The variety of these amenities has doubled over simply 4 years, over 5,400 now within the U.S. Their builders use the promise of jobs and financial progress to get approval, ensnaring native townships and communities in decades-long authorized battles.
“It is no secret that expanding gas infrastructure is directly tied to the data center build-out,” stated Alli Finn of AINowInstitute. “And that is because these facilities just use an exponential amount of energy.”
A map of the New York’s most up-to-date fossil gas infrastructure projectsCourtesy of the Sane Power Undertaking
In lots of circumstances, vitality necessities are fulfilled through restored fossil gas infrastructure, such because the Greenidge Technology information heart in Yates County that at the moment burns pure gasoline to mine cryptocurrency, inbuilt a refurbished coal energy plant.
Yvonne Taylor, of the Seneca Lake Guardian, has been litigating towards the ability because it started mining cryptocurrency in 2019. Regardless of their efforts, legal professionals for the ability regularly delayed the method by interesting the lawsuits, which tried to drive the crypto-mining operation to close down based mostly on its overuse and contamination of water from Seneca Lake, round 139 million gallons used day by day as coolant, and the noise air pollution, effectively over 80 decibels that carries on for miles.
The Greenridge Technology facility close to Dresden, New YorkCourtesy of Lauren Petracca and Earthjustice
In the course of the appeals course of, the ability has been permitted to function, a standing that has continued for the previous 4 years. Based on Taylor, the ability must renew its land-use license earlier than the choice is seen by. The Seneca Lake Guardian’s newest effort consists of a further regulation that forces amenities comparable to Greenridge to stop operation through the procedural appeals course of.
“All of a sudden in January, the political winds change,” Taylor stated. “It seems like Governor Hochul is telling her department to capitulate in Greenridge. In the court of law, it seemed like the DEC and us were on the same side. But now the DEC is saying ‘We don’t need to rush this,’ and we can let this continue to drag out and let this company continue to operate… Hochul is seeing the need for as much power in the state as possible.”
Greenridge Technology, which beforehand promised to burn solely privately bought fossil fuels provided from Canada through Dominion Power, utilized to hitch New York’s grid in 2024 to attract 270 MW of energy and exchange the a lot much less worthwhile crypto-mining operation with AI. When initially pitched, the corporate promised to provide the township with over 100 jobs, of which lower than 20 stay, and promote the excess energy again to the state.
As The New York Instances reported in late November, Hochul’s husband is part of a regulation agency, Davis Polk & Wardell, representing Greenridge Technology along with the Williams firm of Tulsa, answerable for NESE. A lot to the shock of activists, Hochul repealed the “100-foot rule” on Dec. 19, which had pressured ratepayers to subsidize new gasoline hookups and can finally scale back energy payments.
However it might be too little too late, as in keeping with Bloomberg, electrical energy prices in areas close to “significant data center activity” rose by 267% in simply 5 years.
“What the majority of the build-out is doing, which is intimately tied to big tech, is pushing us back to reliance on fossil fuels and harming communities through rising costs, air pollution, sucking up our clean water, destabilizing our energy grid,” stated Finn.
NESE and New York’s Grid lock
On Sept. 18, the New York State Public Service Fee (PSC) authorised Nationwide Grid’s long-term infrastructure plan, which incorporates the controversial NESE pipeline, by unanimous choice. NESE alone would improve greenhouse gasoline emissions by 12%, severely undermining the Local weather Change Act’s purpose of being net-zero by 2040.
The two.5 million ratepayers in Brooklyn, Queens and Lengthy Island can be on the hook for the pipeline’s round $3 billion building price by a +3% improve of their energy payments. Although these downstate ratepayers might discover these payments climb even larger throughout the subsequent few years.
Earlier this yr, the Division of Power (DOE) requested the Brookhaven Nationwide Laboratory (BNL), a nationwide analysis facility in Suffolk, start trying to construct its personal AI information heart on campus. It will require the development of a brand new energy plant often known as Caithness Lengthy Island II, solely powered by pure gasoline regardless of its branding as a “new clean energy source.” Based on the DOE filings, the info heart would embody over 90 acres of land, equal to roughly 16 blocks in Manhattan. 4 of the tasks included within the submitting have already entered the subsequent stage of growth.
Courtesy of DOE
On Nov. 10, Paul Haering, vice chairman of capital funding at New York Transco, spoke at a panel titled “From Data to Demand: AI’s Impact on Energy & Communities” at Hofstra College. “Long Island is truly an electrical island. Starting in 2027, there is potential for a reliability concern on Long Island,” he stated.
In April of 2025, Williams/Transco revived the NESE pipeline, the DOE filed for the BNL information heart and Trump signed an govt order, “Protecting American Energy from State Overreach.” Each NESE and the BNL information heart are slated to be operational by 2027, although the middle has but to hitch the NYISO interconnection queue.
The streamlined NESE allowing course of skipped the required public hearings and shortened the window for public feedback, of which over 10,000 had been submitted in protest of the pipeline, together with 137 public officers comparable to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and outgoing Metropolis Comptroller Brad Lander.
In its long-term plan, Nationwide Grid cites the 2024 Energy Developments report from NYISO, which states that the state’s gasoline infrastructure may face “deficiencies” as early because the winter of 2027 and claimed NESE would finally internet ratepayers $6 billion in financial savings.
Because of the additional vitality required to warmth properties and function giant amenities within the winter, Nationwide Grid depends on pure gasoline to complement vitality wants and claims the town dangers blackouts and brownouts throughout peak hours with out the development of NESE.
“We are grateful to the Public Service Commission for its thoughtful evaluation of our Long Term Gas Plan, and their extensive analysis of the need for reliable energy for New Yorkers. The PSC order today affirms our determination that the NESE pipeline project is needed for enhanced reliability of our gas network,” stated Sally Librera, Nationwide Grid NY President, after the choice.
Nevertheless, the 2025 report moved the date again three years to the winter of 2040. In an Institute of Power Economics and Monetary Evaluation (IEEFA) report on New York’s vitality wants, writer Suzanne Mattei says Nationwide Grid’s claims of potential blackouts on account of an absence of provide are unsubstantiated, later calling them “bogus.” The $6 billion in financial savings can be a doubtful proposition to Mattei, as the price of setting up the pipeline would negate the $2.75 billion that may go to downstate New Yorkers and gasoline provide will not be the principle driver of electrical energy prices.
Throughout Winter Storm Elliott in 2022, downstate New Yorkers confronted a scarcity of pure gasoline. After an investigation, the Federal Power Regulatory Fee (FERC) acknowledged that it wasn’t on account of an elevated demand for fossil fuels or lack of provide, however was brought on by the freezing of a number of “wellheads” and different gear in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia because of the huge 2,000-mile protection of the storm throughout the Northeast. The NESE pipeline would connect with wellheads in shut proximity.
“It is reasonable to be concerned that the project would be subject to the same vulnerability as the existing gas supply system,” Mattei stated.
Simply two years later, FERC helped “fast-track” the NESE pipeline by not requiring an replace to its environmental impression assertion from six years in the past — an obvious disregard of protocol that Mattei referred to as “unacceptable.”
The PA Marketing consultant, an impartial consulting firm employed by the PSC, agreed with Mattei on the state’s future vitality necessities and wrote that the 2025 vitality report is far more according to the “historical trend,” and the older report Nationwide Grid used to find out NESE’s necessity was “overly optimistic” of New York’s financial progress post-pandemic. Within the closing draft, the agency concluded that the pipeline would improve general system reliability amongst different positives, however that Nationwide Grid would nonetheless be capable to sustain with projected demand with out it.
“The gas planning activities we require National Grid to undertake today will ensure that National Grid continues to provide safe, adequate, and reliable service while striving to meet the state’s greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets,” stated Fee Chair Rory M. Christian in a press launch. “Because widespread gas outages are a real possibility today, given the narrow margin between available gas supply and demand.”
The older report might have been nearer to the reality, because the addition of the info facilities will nearly double even the inflated 2024 vitality demand estimation. The PA Marketing consultant included an asterix: “it is not unreasonable to believe that the load forecast could increase in future iterations, depending on the development of macroeconomic trends.”
NESE will breach in New York Bay
Fraczek and members of the Sane Power Undertaking, Rockaway Girls for Progress, and different environmental advocacy teams met on the deck of the American Princess, a whale watching tour boat, in early November for a guided tour off the shores of Rockaway: precisely the place the NESE pipeline can be constructed.
Although no whales had been noticed, vacationers and New Yorkers out for the sunny but frigid fall day had been delighted to witness a number of pods of bottlenose dolphins that breached out and in of the water across the boat.
Picture by Patrick Stachniak
Marine life returned to Rockaway after New York prohibited the dumping of waste in waterways round 30 years in the past. Joan Flynn of Rockaway Girls for Progress, adorned in winter apparel to fend off the chilly wind from the ocean, gave a small speech to the gang because it returned to harbor.
Flynn spoke of her expertise residing in Breezy Level for over 50 years, elevating her kids and witnessing the return of birds, dolphins and whales to the seashores close to her house.
“[New Yorkers] have to find out what National Grid is actually building this pipeline for. We didn’t need it the first time, we didn’t need it the second time, and we don’t need it the third time,” Flynn stated.
The heavy metals that after stopped animals from safely swimming and feeding so near shore settled on the backside of the ocean and had been safely coated by layers of sand. Development of the NESE pipeline would as soon as once more reintroduce lead, arsenic, antimony, mercury, chromium and different heavy metals deposited within the sediment from the Raritan Bay Slag Superfund Web site in New Jersey, dredging up the ocean ground on its manner from Pennsylvania to Rockaway.
Director of Sane Power Undertaking Kim Fraczek aboard the American Princess with different activistsPhoto by Patrick Stachniak
Fraczek, who protested the NESE pipeline the 2 different occasions Williams/Transco tried to construct it, says Nationwide Grid hides behind the truth that the pipeline and the long-term infrastructure plan are labeled as a generic continuing and never a ratepayer case. Charge circumstances require the method to be overseen by an administrative regulation decide with far more stringent protocols for public hearings, feedback, and so on. The generic continuing allowed the method to be streamlined, reducing the window for public feedback in half and eliminating the necessity for a single public listening to.
“It’s just such an absolute abomination of the entire premise of the long-term gas plan by including Williams’ NESE pipeline as something that’s even legitimate,” Fraczek stated. “The fact that [the PSC] is legitimizing this pipeline gives an indication to the DEC that they’re all taking this very seriously, and you should take this seriously, and we even need to start considering cost implications for the electricity market.”
The DEC authorised William Transco’s water high quality allow a number of days after the tour: the identical allow it had denied simply 5 years in the past. The environmentalists sat in a somber circle aboard the American Princess discussing NESE’s seeming inevitability, and the disappointing lack of whales was an unwell omen for the way forward for New York Bay.
“Just days after an election in which voters across New York and the country made clear that affordability is their top concern, it is simply perverse that New York State will be saddling gas ratepayers with billions of dollars in costs for a dirty fracked gas pipeline that is completely unnecessary and an environmental nightmare,” stated State Sen. Liz Krueger in a press launch on Nov. 7.
Indigenous nation STAMPs out information heart in Batavia
In Batavia, a small city in Genesee County, members of the native indigenous nation and their allies held a press convention in entrance of Metropolis Corridor on Nov. 8 to have a good time a authorized victory that halted the event one such hyperscaled information heart on the Science, Expertise, and Superior Manufacturing (STAMP) web site.
The doorway to the STAMP heart is lower than a mile from the Tonawanda-Seneca NationPhoto by Patrick Stachniak
The impracticality of the positioning, surrounded by farmland and miles away from the closest supply of water, didn’t dissuade The Genesee County Financial Improvement Heart (GCEDC). Nevertheless, the shortage of each vitality and plumbing infrastructure within the surrounding space posed vital challenges to potential builders who spent $426 million of public funds: half of which got here from former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Buffalo Billion Program.
GCEDC first approached the agricultural farm city of Alabama 20 years in the past with a proposal to construct an industrial manufacturing campus on a close-by swathe of land encompassing round 1,200 acres. The township and the close by Tonawanda-Seneca Nation agreed, unintentionally embroiling themselves in many years of authorized battles with GDEDC and the infrastructure required to make STAMP operational. One such lawsuit was towards a wastewater pipeline that minimize by the Iroquois Wildlife Sanctuary, which was later scrapped when U.S. Fish and Wildlife pulled its permits… solely after staff spilled lots of of gallons of hydraulic fluid into the close by creek and guarded wetlands.
Two years later, the hard-fought victory towards the info heart got here from the Tonawanda-Seneca Nation and their allies, together with the Sierra Membership and the Allies of Tonawanda-Seneca Nation. The organizations sued the incoming information heart alleging Stream U.S. Knowledge Facilities, GCEDC and the City of Alabama violated state environmental regulation by approving the 270 MW information heart that may embody over 60,000 sq. ft. The dearth of a close-by water supply meant the servers could be cooled largely utilizing industrial AC models, which generated noise ranges exceeding 80 decibels and disrupted the native ecosystem that, as subsistence hunters, the Tonawanda-Seneca Nation depends on.
Chief Scott Logan speaks on the victory press convention in entrance of Batavia Metropolis HallPhoto by Patrick Stachniak
“We knew nothing. They got permits, even crossing county lines without the proper permission, and it was Hochul, Schumer, and the DEC that pushed everything through under the radar for it all to be able to start,” stated Chief Scott Logan of the Tonawanda-Seneca Bear Clan.
Very like the NESE pipeline, the litigants alleged a violation in process on environmental permits. The Stream U.S. Knowledge Heart’s challenge, which obtained $427 million in authorities subsidies, failed to incorporate particular environmental and web site plan evaluations. Sierra Membership and the Tonawanda-Seneca Nation dropped the lawsuit with impunity after Stream pulled the plug by itself plan, however not due to any sudden change of coronary heart.
Picture by Patrick Stachniak
Apollo World Administration, one of many “Big Four” non-public fairness corporations within the nation, acquired Stream U.S. Knowledge facilities and requested the challenge be canned because it was not giant sufficient to warrant the funding into the infrastructure required for operation. New plans had been drawn up, practically tripling vitality necessities to 650 MW and rising the info heart’s measurement to 90,000 sq. ft.
Based on Grandell “Bird” Logan, a spokesperson of the Tonawanda-Seneca Nation and son of Chief Scott Logan, Stream U.S. Knowledge Facilities representatives who met with the Nation acknowledged the corporate was initially drawn to the campus as a result of “the S.T.A.M.P site has excess power and infrastructure.”
An “excess of infrastructure” on the proposed plot for the info heart at STAMPPhoto by Patrick Stachniak
Power wants had been supposedly addressed when Plug Energy bought 30 acres of land to construct a hydrogen manufacturing facility and funded a substation additionally positioned on S.T.A.M.P.’s campus, which may then be used to energy different close by factories, comparable to Edwards Vacuum, by connecting to close by excessive voltage energy strains owned by Nationwide Grid. However as of Nov. 14, Plug Energy tried to desert the challenge and hopes to dump the over $100 million price of property of the property… to an unnamed information heart developer, in keeping with the CEO of Stream.
Gov. Hochul throws a shovel of dust, celebrating the approval of Plug Energy’s, now deserted, hydrogen technology plant challenge.Courtesy of the Governor’s Workplace 
The development web site main as much as Plug Energy as of Nov. 8Photo by Patrick Stachniak
Nevertheless, Chicken Logan, 27, isn’t dissuaded by the considered upcoming authorized battles centered round one other information heart on the S.T.A.M.P web site.
“I can’t even imagine what life would be like if I weren’t in Tonawanda-Seneca,” stated Chicken Logan. “Our ceremonies throughout the year… they’re ceremonies for the maple, for the seeds, for the corn, for the beans, and for the harvest. I put my full being into protecting these things; continuing these [traditions]. I can’t imagine living any other way, and I’m thankful to live this life.”
Finn of AiNowInstitute is skeptical that the AI bubble will burst anytime quickly, and believes it to be an outdated state and federal coverage that allowed information heart builders to embroil themselves with communities just like the Tonawanda-Seneca Nation, Alabama, and Dresden, the place Greenridge Technology is positioned. And different pipelines, such because the Iroquois enlargement and in-works Structure, will solely make powering them simpler.
Within the coming years, New Yorkers can be on the hook each environmentally and financially for a lot of of Massive Tech’s tasks with over a dozen, from Niagara to Lengthy Island, already on the best way.
“I don’t know how long, but I will say is that Big Tech is rigging the game so that if and when that bubble bursts, they are not going to be holding the bag,” stated Finn. “It will be everyday people in our communities… and this infrastructure build-out is such a painful example of it.”
