The NAACP is fighting back against AI data centers

xAI’s notorious data centers near Memphis, Tenn., are appropriately named Colossus 1 and Colossus 2. The supercomputers that power the Grok chatbot are indeed enormous — they’re also environmental menaces, according to the NAACP.

The civil rights organization sued Elon Musk’s xAI last year over Colossus’ numerous methane gas turbines, saying the company used a legal loophole to install them without permits and, in doing so, threatened the health of the nearby Black-majority community of Boxtown. Somewhat shockingly, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) agreed with the NAACP, ruling in January 2026 that Colossus’ turbines were not exempt from air quality permit requirements. Curtailing the turbines, which emit nitrogen oxide into a community already dealing with high levels of pollution, was a victory for the NAACP and Abre’ Conner, director of the organization’s Center for Environmental and Climate Justice.

Just this month, Conner and the NAACP were buoyed when New York state introduced a three-year moratorium on data center construction, potentially giving legislators time to enact regulations for the energy-sucking facilities. Conner, a lawyer and longtime environmental justice leader, spoke with Mashable about her mission and how the data center build-out is reminiscent of the destructive highway construction of the last century.

Tell us why the NAACP is making data centers a priority.

Conner: A lot of the time, people will attribute the AI bubble that may pop up on their search screen to something that lives in the cloud, but it doesn’t. It uses physical infrastructure to power these AI requests.

The reason we’re so interested and concerned about this is that for decades, the NAACP has understood that environmental and climate justice issues are racial justice issues. A lot of the technology and promises, as it relates to energy, have shown up in Black communities and frontline communities in the past, from fracking to crypto mining.

A lot of this industrial build-out tends to be concentrated in particular places, and we saw that very pointedly last year when Elon Musk and xAI decided to build a data center near Boxtown, which is in south Memphis, and that’s a historically Black community. What was even more concerning was that there was a typical process you went through to get a permit, and then, at that point, it would be decided whether you could operate and what that operation should look like. And that data center was operating with unregulated methane gas turbines.

So we had concerns about whether we would see more of these operations now that you have tech billionaires [showing interest] in other communities. Of course, we did start to see the AI boom [manifest] throughout the year in different ways; different nondisclosure agreements being signed, backroom deals, and more pollution that was starting to be more concentrated in communities that have been fighting back against environmental and climate justice concerns for years.

[B]ecause it’s people in the tech space, they’re promising that somehow [the data centers are] different. Even though they’re using the same industrial build-out — the same types of diesel generator backups, methane gas — somehow that’s going to be less harmful to people’s health when it was done in the past.

What have these tech companies been telling community members?

[That’s] if they even show up and talk to the community members at all. A lot of times, they’re not talking to community members; they might be talking to one or two elected officials. They might talk to someone at an agency level, maybe. But there aren’t a lot of conversations actually happening with the people most impacted. That’s part of the problem — there’s not a lot of transparency. By the time people find out about it, the zoning is being redone, and construction may already be happening. In the case of xAI, they’re already operating, and then they want to go and have a conversation with the community after they’re already in it.

Because [the tech companies are] going into places where there’s been disinvestment over decades and decades, we’re seeing the same playbook used, like promising a community fair or investment in a school. That has nothing to do with the pollution they’re actually bringing into the communities, or the hundreds of millions of gallons of water they’re utilizing in order to run the data center, or the noise concerns. We’re seeing some of the same plays we saw in the coal-fired power plant boom, from fracking and crypto mining.

But what’s interesting and different is that because it’s people in the tech space, they’re promising that somehow [the data centers are] different. Even though they’re using the same industrial build-out — the same types of diesel generator backups, methane gas — somehow that’s going to be less harmful to people’s health when it was done in the past.

It seems reminiscent of the construction of the U.S. highway system in the 20th century, when Black and minority neighborhoods were leveled for the expressways. Are there parallels?

Absolutely. Redlining, the idea of NIMBYism, all that kind of framing is what we’re seeing now. There’s also this promise of a better future, but when people working at these companies are asked, “Would you want that data center in your backyard?” They’re like, “Well, let’s take a pause.”

When we look at redlining to highways to trains, there was a systemic racism component to it. If the [tech companies are] getting advised to, for example, build in places where there is already existing infrastructure, that is just going to deepen the environmental and climate concerns from people who don’t want more pollution in [their] communities.

I imagine the reaction from governments to data centers is very different depending on where they are. Tennessee, for example, is not a hotbed of environmental activism, while a state like New York is considering moratoriums on data centers. How does that geographic inconsistency affect your efforts?

For me, as someone who’s been doing environment and climate justice work for a decade and a half, what’s extremely hopeful for me is where seeing people across political lines, in urban and rural communities, all asking questions. They’re saying, “Do we have enough answers in order to move forward with a data center in our community?” That is something that’s really different than what we’ve seen in other industrial build-outs in the past.

People are asking, “Why are you signing a nondisclosure agreement about our public resources? Shouldn’t we be able to see what you’re all talking about if we’re paying taxes in this community? Shouldn’t we be part of that conversation?”

Because people are seeing their utility bills go up, they’re seeing the impacts of data centers even before one shows up. That’s changed the landscape of the conversation. That’s why we’re seeing places like New York, saying, “Do we have enough information to move forward?” In [the NAACP’s] playbook for 2026, that was something we shared. If there’s not enough information, call for a moratorium until you have the information needed to move forward in a way that feels responsible to the community that will feel those impacts.

Questions are being asked [of the tech companies, like], “OK, you’re saying jobs. How many?” The highest we’re seeing is in the dozens; a lot of them are temporary.

Are the tech companies trying to sell the idea of job creation with these data centers?

It’s absolutely the same playbook of, “There’s going to be jobs. It’s going to be good for the local economy. This is something we’re going to do in the cleanest way possible.” Questions are being asked [of the tech companies, like], “OK, you’re saying jobs. How many?” The highest we’re seeing is in the dozens; a lot of them are temporary, a lot of them are on the construction side, a lot of them are going to deepen the same concerns that we see when it comes to working on sites when you’re going to be exposed to a bunch of pollution non-stop.

In our frontline framework that we released last year, over 100 organizations, allies, and coalition partners came together to say that jobs cannot be more important than the health of the community members who live there.

What is it like working in environmental justice in 2026, when the federal government is so pro-AI and has expressed very little concern about the environment and minority communities?

When we saw Project 2025, we knew what that was going to look like. We knew there wasn’t going to be a rollback of our environment and climate protections. We knew that was coming.

For the NAACP, at our roots, it’s always been about people power. It’s been about highlighting what we could do with or without government support on the federal level.

Back in North Carolina, in Warren County, when you had a Black community saying, “We don’t want dumping in our community,” there wasn’t any federal government support per se at that time. The state was even saying, “Well, we’re not really sure we want to be involved in that.”

It was the people on the ground who mobilized and said, “We will not take this anymore.” They created the audience that was needed on the national level, and that’s what we’re seeing now. Even though we don’t have an administration at the federal level that is helpful, hopefully people are understanding just what this means. We’re in a midterm year; we have an opportunity to have people in office who represent our perspectives. The mobilization, the organizing, the work on the ground will always be there, and as long as we’re there with the communities willing to push back, I think we still have a fighting chance regardless of who’s in office.

Read more about the NAACP’s environmental work here.

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