Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro shifted from aggressively courting tech investments, to signing an executive order on August 18, 2026 that embeds enforcement mechanisms into his previously announced voluntary standards for data center development. The Governor’s Responsible Infrastructure Development (GRID) Standards are a set of requirements around energy costs, transparency and community engagement, economic development, and environmental protection for new data center projects.
The week of the executive order, the Ohio River Valley Institute fielded a statewide representative survey of Pennsylvania adults. Many findings corroborate a growing body of research that shows the public is rapidly souring on data center development. This work further illuminates what Pennsylvanians want policymakers to do about it.
Top impressions are overwhelmingly negative
- Before respondents were given any prompts or language about the issue, their initial associations with data centers were almost universally negative.
- Respondents referenced local opposition, energy use and costs, water use, and environmental impacts.
- Concerns appeared across political ideologies, urbanicities, and demographic groups.
Nearly 7 in 10 oppose data center construction in Pennsylvania, similar to the national rate.
- 65% oppose the construction of data centers in Pennsylvania, (33% somewhat, 32% strongly).
- Women are slightly more likely to oppose.
- Open-ended responses surfaced anti-corporate sentiment and a sense that “we just don’t need it,” in addition to concerns about energy and water impacts.
Pennsylvanians expect higher energy costs and environmental harm—but also some job growth.
When asked about the possible impacts of data center development:
- 7 in 10 said energy costs would go up.
- Half of respondents predicted jobs would increase some (38%) or a lot (13%)
- 54% said data centers would have a moderate (24%) to significant (30%) negative impact on the environment.
There is broad appetite for limiting development
Respondents were split roughly three ways between preferring the state to pursue a full moratorium, stronger regulations, and discouraging development altogether, with the largest share (36%) preferring to discourage data center development in Pennsylvania.
- Demographic differences are relatively small, with men and women evenly split
- Views are relatively consistent across political ideology.
- Younger respondents are slightly more inclined to discourage development.
- Older respondents are more likely to favor stronger rules.
- Just 4% preferred to “encourage more development.”
Most Pennsylvanians believe that the ones who benefit from data centers most, are the companies developing them.
There’s strong opposition to building new gas plants specifically to serve data centers.
- 83% favor either pursuing alternatives first or not building new gas plants at all. When asked how Pennsylvania should meet new energy demand from data centers,
- 59% said Pennsylvania should prioritize energy efficiency and renewable energy before building new gas plants.
- 24% said Pennsylvania should not build new gas plants to meet data center demand.
- 16% said building new gas plants should be allowed.
Shapiro’s executive order is viewed as reasonable—but support for stronger action grows with more information
- A plurality of Pennsylvanians think the move, as described by the Governor, strikes the right balance
- After respondents were presented with facts about remaining challenges for local voice, and the tax break that remains available, there was an approximately 10-point shift away from “strikes the right balance” and toward “regulations don’t go far enough.”
- But some respondents are still questioning what compliance, accountability, and enforcement looks like.
Affordability is the clear priority for Pennsylvania’s economic future.
- When respondents were asked to think more broadly about their priorities for Pennsylvania’s economic future in a multi-select question, 54% prioritized keeping energy, housing, and other household costs affordable, making it the single standout priority.
What the findings tell us and what we’re still trying to understand
As we processed these results, we wanted to look beyond the topline numbers and consider how Pennsylvanians’ expectations compare with what ORVI’s own research tells us about data centers and economic development: that these projects are poor job creators and stand to raise costs across the board.
Much of what we found reinforces a growing body of public opinion research – people are deeply concerned about how these developments could impact their bills, their health, and their communities. And as is the case across the country, these concerns transcend any particular political ideology or demographic.
But several of our findings stood out – especially the strength of support for limiting development and related gas buildout, demand for local control, the way respondents weigh jobs against other costs, and the extent to which affordability and questions about who benefits seem to shape people’s views.
Opposition translates to appetite for limiting development
An open-ended question on data center development revealed serious concerns about data centers’ local impacts, like the thrumming noise pollution and round-the-clock security floodlights that have made headlines and driven pushback in host communities across the country. But even when asked about data center construction statewide, not necessarily in their own communities, the percentage of Pennsylvanians opposed to development outnumbers those in favor nearly two to one, our survey finds. Resistance to nearby data center development likely would have registered even higher. One only needs to look to the extreme building-related flooding in Mason County, WV to see the gap between the economic promises made during the proposal phase and the stark realities communities experience once construction begins.
In Pennsylvania, negative feelings towards data centers appear to translate into a pervasive desire for policymakers and leaders to do more to prevent harm. Respondents were roughly split between a preference to pause development, implement stronger regulations, or discourage development in the state altogether. Consequently, less than a fifth of respondents in the state feel that Governor Shapiro’s executive order “went too far.” And the more they learned, the more they desired even stronger protections.
Moratoriums and permitting pauses are already happening in municipalities across the state. While Governor Shapiro’s order falls short of a full moratorium – which our poll suggests is politically palatable at the statewide level – it does tie eligibility for the state’s generous sales tax exemption to compliance with his GRID regulatory standards, which are meant to protect energy affordability and encourage community engagement on data center projects. Across the country, there’s growing support for stronger regulations on data centers, including among MAGA voters and “AI-optimists” – people want robust policies that protect natural resources, increase transparency and accountability, and protect ratepayers from higher utility bills. And the Pennsylvania legislature has an opportunity to do even more on this front.
But voters appear to be increasingly skeptical of the old economic-development model where governments give large corporations tax breaks, subsidies or preferential rates in exchange for promises of jobs and investment. Across states and the country, there’s rising opposition to tax benefits for Big Tech and data center developers. And despite the Governor’s new order, one thing that stays on the table is the sales tax exemption for permitted data centers, the cost of which keeps ballooning, costing the state hundreds of millions of dollars per year.
When we clarified this to respondents, and told them that some communities are still worried about their ability to have a say in approving developments, we saw a ten-point increase in the belief that Shapiro’s order “doesn’t go far enough.”
Pennsylvanians may be more optimistic about data center jobs than the evidence warrants.
Data centers have made a bad first impression.
Communities across the region are already experiencing the direct impact to air and water that can come with building large data centers, and the infrastructure to power them. Meanwhile, about half of the Pennsylvanians in our survey anticipated a negative environmental impact from data center development in the state. Nearly 75% of respondents believe data center development would impact utility costs, digging into the pocket books of everyday families. In Pennsylvania, residential electricity rates are already rising, driven largely by data center demand. Pennsylvania’s Independent Fiscal Office reported in July that the average electricity bill has already increased more than 20% since 2024.
About half of our respondents believed data center development would increase jobs in Pennsylvania at least somewhat. But research shows data centers are actually poor job creators in the long term. They require enormous amounts of capital, land, and electricity, but relatively few workers once construction is complete. The US economy’s “information” sector — driven largely by AI and data centers — has tripled its economic output since 2005 as the data center boom continues to inflate, our previous analysis shows. Yet, in the same period, jobs have actually shrunk. Meanwhile, data centers are driving up electricity bills, cutting into families’ disposable incomes and further negating the sector’s jobs impact. Our shale gas research tells a similar story. Pennsylvania has become one of the country’s largest natural gas producers, yet the counties responsible for much of that production have not experienced employment, wage, and population growth commensurate with the industry’s enormous output.
Pennsylvanians aren’t buying the case for new gas buildout
One of our more surprising findings is how strongly Pennsylvanians reject the idea that rising electricity demand from data centers should automatically mean building more natural gas power plants.
That is striking in a state where natural gas has long occupied an outsized place in the political conversation. For nearly two decades, political and industry leaders have repeatedly portrayed shale gas as both an economic engine and an essential part of the state’s energy future. More recently, projected electricity demand from data centers has become part of the case for a new wave of highly polluting gas-fired power plants and related infrastructure.
When asked how Pennsylvania should meet new energy demand from data centers, 83% favored either pursuing alternatives first, or not building new gas plants at all. Nearly six in 10 (59%) said the state should prioritize energy efficiency and renewable energy before building new gas plants, while another 24% said Pennsylvania should not build new gas plants to serve data centers at all.
For years, Pennsylvania’s political debate has often treated expanding gas production and gas use as synonymous with expanding economic opportunity. Yet the economic reality is much more complicated —and previous ORVI polling has similarly found Pennsylvanians considerably more skeptical of fracking’s economic benefits than the state’s political narrative might suggest.
Data centers may therefore be exposing a larger shift worth watching. Pennsylvanians appear reluctant to commit to another major wave of fossil fuel infrastructure simply because a new industry is promising economic growth. Instead, most want the state to ask first whether that infrastructure is actually necessary—and whether there are less costly ways to meet the demand.
What is successful economic development?
Our poll suggests that Pennsylvanians are thinking critically about the use of public money to lure and support development. They are concerned about development inflating household costs, failing to produce lasting jobs and meaningful benefits, and taking away their say in their community’s future.
Simply promising investment and jobs may no longer be enough. People appear increasingly interested in the other side of the ledger: what development costs, who pays those costs, who receives the benefits, who has a say, and whether the result actually leaves communities better off.