Shapiro on placing guardrails on AI data centers in Pennsylvania: “I don’t want developers running roughshod”

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro doesn’t want data center developers “running roughshod” in Pennsylvania communities, he said, explaining his decision to sign an executive order on Tuesday limiting data centers in the commonwealth, after he previously worked to bring AI data centers to Pennsylvania. 

Appearing on “CBS Mornings” on Wednesday, Shapiro said that increasingly, he’s seeing developers take advantage of Pennsylvanians, a realization he said he reached through conversations with his constituents. That wasn’t the case, the Democratic governor said, when he helped secure a $20 billion investment from Amazon for two data centers in Pennsylvania last year. 

“You know, I listened candidly,” Shapiro said on “CBS Mornings.” “I showed up in communities and heard the concerns of neighbors. I stood in the left field line of Eddie Staback Park in Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, and looked where a data center developer who was wreaking havoc on a community wanted to put their data center right where the parents would be sitting watching a ball game. I’m just about seven miles away from a proposed project in a really densely populated area here in Montgomery County, where a developer is just thumbing his nose at the community, not listening to folks. These are not the kind of projects I want in Pennsylvania.”

Shapiro, who is considered to be a potential 2028 presidential candidate, insisted this isn’t about politics, but about the people of Pennsylvania. Voters throughout the country, according to recent CBS News/YouGov polling, are skeptical of data centers. Americans are far more likely to oppose new data centers in their area than support them, although the vast majority also admit they know only a little or nothing about them. 

Data centers are facilities filled with networked computer services, storage drives and other related equipment that process everything from email traffic to software. Demand for that kind of storage and processing power has skyrocketed with the rapid development of AI. 

“I don’t want developers running roughshod across our communities,” Shapiro said. “That’s not what happened a year ago when I did work with Amazon to bring those two data centers here in Pennsylvania. But increasingly, developers see an opportunity to take advantage of Pennsylvanians. I won’t let it.”

Shapiro’s executive order takes into consideration the environmental, energy and community costs of new centers, establishing an intense review process for any new centers, requiring them to provide their own power, and requiring municipal approval. 

“We’ve seen too many developers who are trying to bulldoze our community with these speculative deals that are never going to come into reality, and they’re wreaking havoc on our neighbors,” Shapiro said. “I don’t want them here in Pennsylvania. If you’ve got a serious proposal that enjoys the support of the local community, that protects our environment, that generates power, then we’re willing to talk to you and engage with you. And that is our plan here in the commonwealth now with the strictest requirements in the entire country.” 

On the shifting political winds in the country, “CBS Mornings” host Gayle King asked Shapiro for his thoughts on the Democratic Socialists of America, or DSA, who have had some notable primary wins this cycle. 

“Yeah, I think we have to see what happens in the general election,” Shapiro said. “But what’s also clear is there is a ton of pblockion in the electorate right now, and a desire to defeat Donald Trump’s chaos and cruelty and corruption, and people are showing up in record numbers. Our party is going to certainly have an ideological battle. It’s going to have a real debate over these ideas going forward. But the thing we’ve got to focus on is winning in these midterms and defeating Donald Trump and his enablers.”