Sunday, 12 July 2026

The Hazle Township board voted on June 8 on a zoning ordinance that would pause data center applications in the town for 180 days, according to Inside Climate News. The vote targeted the Project Hazelnut proposal, which includes 15 data center buildings and an electrical substation across a nearly 1,300-acre site.

The local pause came weeks after Pennsylvania state legislators introduced a Senate bill that would block data center development for three years, Inside Climate News reported. More than 60 data center proposals have sprung up in Pennsylvania in the last year.

A few miles from Hazleton, residents in Kline Township have questions about a data center proposal that would include up to 10 buildings across more than 300 acres, according to Inside Climate News. Amazon Web Services put in an application for a data center at the Devil's Mountain site near Kline Township.

Opposition in the region is the highest in the state. According to recent polling cited by Inside Climate News, 33 percent of residents in the region strongly oppose data center development in or near their communities, the highest percentage in the state.

Luzerne County, where Hazleton is located, is home to three Superfund sites, according to Inside Climate News.

Data center developers in Pennsylvania plan to rely on at least seven new natural gas-fired power plants that would emit greenhouse gases equivalent to adding 14 million cars to the road annually, according to a new report. The Environmental Integrity Project, an advocacy group, said the plants would together emit some 68 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent each year.

That volume would represent a 24% increase over Pennsylvania's emissions as of 2022, according to the report. The planned plants would produce about 14 gigawatts of power combined.

The report singled out the Homer City Generating Station, which if fully converted to natural gas would emit more than 17.5 million tons a year of CO2 equivalent and create up to 4.7 GW of power. A plant at Shippingport in Beaver County would emit 21.1 million tons a year of greenhouse gases, with a generating capacity of 3.6 GW.

The pattern extends beyond Pennsylvania. Nationally, at least 74 gas-fired power plants are planned to fuel the data-center industry, generating 662 million tons of greenhouse gases, according to the report.

Data centers have also driven demand for renewable capacity. They accounted for half of the contracted wind and solar capacity in 2024, Aaron Tinjum said, quoting research by S&P Global.

Data centers consume more electricity in the United States than in any other country, including China, according to Canary Media citing this year's Statistical Review of World Energy.

Nearly 40% of all power demand from data centers in 2025 came from facilities based in the United States, according to the Statistical Review of World Energy as reported by Canary Media.