About

Learn more about data centers, why policy matters, and how this platform helps people understand key decisions shaping digital infrastructure.

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About

About the Data Center Policy Database

What a data center is and why you should care about them
Data centers are the physical facilities that power cloud services, AI systems, streaming, and nearly every digital platform people use each day. As demand for artificial intelligence accelerates, data centers are becoming major sources of electricity demand and local infrastructure pressure, which means their growth affects energy systems, communities, and long-term public planning.

How policy can help
Public conversations often miss the complex web of zoning approvals, tax incentives, utility rules, and permitting requirements that shape where and how data centers are built. Smart policy can improve transparency, protect communities, align development with energy goals, and create more consistent standards for evaluating trade-offs across states.

Why we made this site
We built this platform to centralize and organize data center policy information in a public-facing, standardized format. By making legislation and regulatory actions easier to compare across states, the site supports interstate coordination, strengthens public awareness, and helps people understand the real-world consequences of infrastructure decisions that are often hidden behind abstract discussions of the "cloud".

About the team
Our team is focused on making data center governance more accessible, understandable, and actionable. We combine policy research and technical implementation to create tools that help communities, researchers, and lawmakers evaluate how data center expansion is reshaping the national landscape.

The Team

Meet the researchers behind this project.

Lauren Bridges

Project Lead

Lauren Bridges is an assistant professor of media studies, faculty co-lead of the Digital Technology for Democracy Lab, and faculty affiliate of environmental thought and practice at the University of Virginia (UVA). She is also faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. Bridges researches the sociotechnical, political economic, and environmental politics of digital infrastructures. She has published in journals such as Information, Communication & Society, Big Data & Society, and New Media & Society, public news outlets such as The Guardian, and has been interviewed on NPR, BBC, CBC, NBC and podcasts such as the Anti-Dystopians and People & Things on the social and environmental impacts of digital infrastructures. Bridges is co-PI of Geographies of Digital Wasting and she is currently writing a book on the local land use politics of digital industrial expansion in Southern California and Northern Virginia. At UVA, Bridges lectures and teaches courses on digital media & the environment, AI policy & society, and critical infrastructure studies. Bridges holds a PhD and MA in communication from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, an MA in creative writing, publishing, and editing from the University of Melbourne, and a BA in business from the University of Queensland.

Grace Gould

Policy Researcher

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Catarina Coelho Herrera

Policy Researcher

Catarina Coelho Herrera is an undergraduate student at the University of Virginia, majoring in global development studies and politics. At the DTD Lab, Catarina works alongside Lauren Bridges supporting research on emerging data center policy and digital infrastructure governance. During her time at UVA, Catarina has contributed to environmental and policy-focused organizations, working on projects related to climate action, infrastructure, and community engagement. Her academic work examines the relationship between policy design and lived experience, including ongoing thesis research on development and local perspectives in rural Appalachia. Catarina is interested in questions of infrastructure governance, regional inequality, and the role of policy in shaping community outcomes.

Isabella Scorsone

Policy Researcher

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Jack Hauger

Lead Software Developer

Jack Hauger is a computer science graduate student at the University of Virginia's School of Engineering and Applied Science. He also holds a bachelor's degree in computer science from the University of Virginia's College of Arts and Science. Jack works alongside Lauren Bridges as the lead programmer of the team's policy database and website. His graduate research focuses on data center policy, differential privacy in utility data, and AI security. Jack also collaborates with computer science faculty to create content for a carbon efficient computing class and to get UVA to join the Green Software Foundation. His work aims to leverage computer science to protect the environment and prevent it from causing social harm.