This blog post is adapted from our How We Fight Back email series. Read more by clicking the links below.
- A Constitutional, Legal, and Moral Crisis
- Interior — Another Stress Test for Democracy
- EPA Turns Against Its Own Mission — How We Fight Back
- Our National Forests Are Under Attack — How We Fight Back
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In this How We Fight Back blog post, we look at the AI data center boom and the Trump administration’s growing pressure to hand public lands over to big tech companies while preempting environmental laws and public input.
Here’s the bottom line — the most dangerous thing we can do in the AI race is give away our public lands and waive environmental laws for data center projects.
Here’s how PEER is fighting back:
- Keeping Public Lands Out of the Data Center Business
Recent reporting indicates the Trump administration is considering transferring more than 17,000 acres of federal land across Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah for at least 12 proposed data centers. Additional parcels, including land in eastern Oregon, have reportedly been identified.
This new land grab stems from a top-down directive. Last July, President Trump signed an executive order making rapid data center construction a federal priority and directed Interior and Energy officials to offer sites on federal land. The order also directs agencies to expand categorical exclusions under the National Environmental Policy Act, which means less environmental review and little or no public input for these projects.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has eagerly embraced the president’s marching orders to put data centers on federal lands.
That’s why PEER just sent a letter to the leaders of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, a bipartisan group, urging them to stop this move. We asked Congress to include clear language in the upcoming government funding bill prohibiting Interior, the Forest Service, and other agencies from using appropriated funds to sell, transfer, lease, or otherwise make federal public lands available for private hyperscale data centers.
As we told Congress, our public lands are one of America’s greatest inheritances, not a taxpayer-subsidized industrial park for the AI industry. Congress has the power to stop this. We are urging it to use that power.
- The Environment and Space
The AI race isn’t staying on the ground. Companies want to put data centers into orbit, and that means a lot of rocket launches. Again, PEER is fighting efforts to waive environmental protections for this industry.
On September 1, PEER joined DarkSky International and American Bird Conservancy, represented by Earthjustice, in calling on the Federal Aviation Administration to reject a proposed rule that would waive all major environmental requirements for commercial space launches. The proposal would undermine 13 environmental laws protecting wildlife, water, and public health.
SpaceX has asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for permission to launch up to one million satellites into low Earth orbit to serve as AI data centers. Today, roughly 15,000 active satellites circle the planet.
In March, PEER told the FCC that the National Environmental Policy Act requires a formal environmental review before it approves the plan. These satellites reenter the atmosphere after about five years, and studies indicate the metals they leave behind could alter stratospheric temperatures, ozone, and the geomagnetic signals that migratory birds, including the endangered whooping crane, use to navigate. SpaceX opposes any review of the effects of its project on the United States.
In July, PEER joined DarkSky International and Environment America, again represented by Earthjustice, in petitioning the FCC to pause licenses for all orbital data centers until it completes a programmatic environmental review. The FCC has historically authorized satellites without any environmental review and has never considered their cumulative impacts.
Why does this matter? Whether it’s a data center on public land or a million satellites overhead, the industry model is the same: move fast, break things, and let others deal with the damage. Giving away public lands and waiving environmental review shifts the costs onto the public (our water, energy bills, wildlife, and night sky) while the profits flow to a handful of the wealthiest companies on Earth.
The public has noticed, and it is speaking out against a blind rush to embrace data centers. Our elected leaders, in Congress and in the agencies that answer to them, have a duty to respond by protecting public lands and requiring meaningful environmental review of new and emerging industries like SpaceX.
PEER will keep fighting to protect our public lands and the laws that safeguard them, as well as take on new and emerging issues such as orbital data centers. Fighting back will require building coalitions, pressuring elected leaders to reflect the will of the people, and using the courts to stop the Trump administration’s reckless actions.
We’d love to hear how you think we should be fighting back. Feel free to contact us.
Thank you for standing with us.
Tim Whitehouse is the Executive Director at PEER.