AI Infrastructure in Asia Data Centers Are Facing Growing Opposition

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Taiwan Machine Tool & Accessory Builders' Association (TMBA)

In Asia, local resistance is mounting against the construction of new AI data centers. In countries such as Australia, India, South Korea, Malaysia, and Thailand, residents are protesting the construction of server farms in their neighborhoods. Some projects have already been halted.

In addition to electricity, land, water supply, and grid connections, the approval of local residents is now increasingly becoming a scarce resource for data center operators and hyperscalers such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google.

In Moss Vale, a small town between Sydney and Canberra, opposition to the construction of a data center began in a WhatsApp group of parents.

The operator of the local data center is already planning to build a second facility, which will be powered by three of its own gas-fired power plants and will operate independently of the existing power grid. The largest of the three power plants, with a capacity of 673 megawatts, would be the most powerful in New South Wales, according to the Japanese business newspaper Nikkei Asia.

“It wasn’t until we realized the full extent of the problem that we all mobilized,” Heather Champion, a city council member and organizer of the “Stop the Gas Plant” campaign, told the newspaper. The central government in Canberra now plans to pass legislation requiring data centers to finance their own power supply.

Protests in India as Well

In Visakhapatnam, South India—known as Vizag for short—there are also citizen protests. There, Google is building a data center with a capacity of one gigawatt in partnership with the Adani Group. It is the largest investment of its kind that Google has announced outside the U.S. to date. According to media reports, environmental permits were granted suspiciously quickly—sometimes within just a few days.

“Our biggest concern is the speed of the approval process,” Deeksha Vanguru, an organizer of a local citizens’ movement opposing the data center, told Nikkei Asia. Concerns here also revolve around the water supply. Data centers require intensive cooling. The city needs 480 million liters of water daily, but currently receives only 410 million.

In Seoul, 22 of 25 district mayors called in August for a separate construction review for data centers in residential areas, according to the Korea JoongAng Daily. “We firmly oppose the construction of data centers that threaten health and property rights!” read a banner hung by protesters in Yeongdeungpo District. Last year, 17 out of 33 approved projects in South Korea were delayed due to protests by local residents, according to statistics from the real estate consulting firm Savills.

In Malaysia, on August 20, 2026, a developer withdrew its building permit application for a data center in Kota Damansara near Kuala Lumpur. An online petition opposing the project had gathered more than 6,000 signatures within a week. Residents feared noise and water shortages. In September 2026, Thailand halted the construction of 49 data centers, according to the Bloomberg news agency. This is a kind of moratorium by the government, which now plans to issue new regulations within a month. In Bangkok, a data center had previously been approved next to a hospital by classifying it as a warehouse, thereby circumventing certain requirements.

Aiming for a Moratorium

Some citizens in Asia feel inspired by similar protests in Europe and the U.S. In July, New York State imposed a one-year moratorium on new hyperscale data centers. Such restrictions are already in place in Europe and Singapore, James Murphy of DC Byte, a London-based market research firm specializing in data centers, told Nikkei Asia. In the first quarter of 2026, local opposition in the U.S. blocked or delayed at least 75 projects worth about 110 billion euros, according to the research group Data Center Watch.

In many places, electricity consumption is the top concern. AI models require a great deal of energy. Local residents therefore fear rising electricity prices. Where operators are planning to build their own gas-fired power plants, there is also concern about new air pollution from exhaust emissions. At other locations, the main concern is water consumption. Data centers also require large amounts of water for cooling, which is problematic in water-scarce regions such as Vizag. Sometimes, general uncertainty about the impact of AI on jobs and society is enough to spark protests, Bloomberg reports.

Nevertheless, the boom in the construction of new data centers shows no signs of slowing down for the time being. Demand remains “red-hot in virtually every market in the region,” Nikkei Asia quotes James Murphy as saying. Consulting firm McKinsey estimates that data center capacity in the Asia-Pacific region could triple by 2030. Thailand approved 88 projects worth approximately 23 billion euros in the first half of the year, before protests broke out recently. PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that around 27 trillion euros (31.05 trillion US dollars) will be invested in data centers worldwide by 2050.

Local Events

"It is still just 'isolated, local opposition,'" Adib Zalkapli of the risk consulting firm "Viewfinder Global Affairs" told Nikkei Asia. However, as attention grows, "greater public scrutiny is to be expected." Many governments are responding with new regulations without completely halting the construction of data centers. “Today’s decision does not mean that Thailand is closing the door on investment in data centers,” Thailand’s Finance Minister Ekniti Nitithanprapas said, according to Bloomberg. “We want clear and uniform standards so that the industry can grow sustainably.”

Among data center developers, the numerous protests are gradually prompting a shift in thinking. While public protests were long viewed as a minor hurdle during the construction phase, dialogue with local residents is now becoming an integral part of project development in many places. The term “social license to operate” is gaining importance. Sustainability and engagement with local residents are increasingly determining access to the market.

Robin Khuda, CEO of the Australian provider AirTrunk, sees public opposition as one of the biggest hurdles to expanding AI infrastructure. However, he says this opposition can often be effectively mitigated through dialogue with residents. “Problems arise when developers fail to engage with the community,” said Murphy of DC Byte. The conflicting interests between residents and data center operators present a dilemma. Artificial intelligence presents a major opportunity for economic growth and new prosperity, even in the affected communities. At the same time, there is a complex mix of legitimate objections and special interests. While some want to make extensive use of AI, they do not want to see an unsightly data center on their own doorstep.

Without data centers, there would be no artificial intelligence and no productivity gains—which Asia’s economies are counting on. Governments in the region must therefore balance the concerns of individual citizen groups against the benefits for the population as a whole. In China, where data centers are being expanded at record speed, there are hardly any public protests. Yet Beijing faces the same dilemma as other Asian governments: the energy and water consumption required for AI must be met without creating shortages elsewhere.

What is Sustainable, and What isn't?

China's data economy has grown by 15.7 percent to 6.78 trillion yuan (about 870 billion euros / 1.0005 trillion US dollars) in the space of a year, according to official statistics. According to various forecasts, the electricity demand of data centers could more than double—or even triple—by 2030, reaching up to 600 terawatt-hours.

That would amount to more than Germany’s total electricity consumption today (about 500 terawatt-hours)—just for data centers alone. Beijing must balance this demand with various objectives, including its national energy security, a reliable supply for Chinese factories, and its stated climate goal of peaking carbon dioxide emissions by 2030. China is therefore placing a strong emphasis on green electricity as it expands its AI data centers. The expansion of renewable energy is an integral part of the Beijing central government’s AI strategy. In Ningxia, China’s first AI data center—powered by local green electricity—went into operation in May 2025, the South China Morning Post reported.

A cloud facility in Zhongwei is powered directly by a solar farm with a capacity of 500 megawatts. An additional 1.5 gigawatts of wind power is expected to be added by the end of this year. Beijing is making the use of renewable energy a requirement for the approval of new data centers. In eight data center clusters in China, which are governed by the central government’s “Dong Shu Xi Suan” (Data from the East, Computing in the West) strategy, at least 80 percent of the electricity must come from clean sources. At the end of June this year, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the National Energy Administration (NEA) officially included the direct connection of data centers to wind and solar farms in their energy plan through 2030, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

AI from the Desert

However, data centers in the desert—or in very remote regions in general—are not always a suitable solution. “Data must be close to users to reduce transmission delays,” Lee Seung-won of ET Solutions told the Korea JoongAng Daily. Even a delay of one-tenth of a second could cause a self-driving car to travel about three meters further. Beijing is therefore currently assessing which computing workloads are less time-sensitive and can be relocated to remote sites, and which cannot.

The reverse approach is also being actively tested, in which green electricity flows to computers in the coastal provinces. China is currently rapidly expanding its extensive network of ultra-high-voltage power lines to transport wind and solar power from the desert regions in the west of the country to the densely populated and heavily industrialized coastal provinces. In addition, an underwater data center was put into operation a few months ago off the coast of Shanghai; it is cooled by seawater and powered by green electricity from a nearby offshore wind farm.

The integration of artificial intelligence into industry across Asia is one of the greatest upheavals since the First Industrial Revolution. Data centers consume vast amounts of electricity, water, and land. At the same time, AI promises unprecedented productivity gains for these countries’ economies and further advances, such as better and more accessible healthcare. The countries that best resolve this contradiction will be particularly competitive in the long term. Asia’s democracies are grappling with this issue in city councils, through petitions, and in oversight commissions. China is attempting to address it through its five-year plans. Actively and effectively managing this conflict between the advantages and disadvantages of artificial intelligence has become one of the most important skills in modern statecraft. 

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