“The EPA's Data Center Disaster” Report (PDF)

Washington (September 30, 2026) - Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), member of the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee and the Environment and Public Works Committee, today released a report titled, The EPA’s Data Center Disaster: How the Trump Administration is Destroying Environmental Protections and Selling Out Communities for Big Tech, detailing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s campaign of reckless deregulation to dilute environmental and public health guardrails in direct service of Big Tech’s race to build data centers.

“75% of Americans do not want a data center in their backyard, yet Trump’s EPA has chosen to facilitate data center construction at the expense of our health, our pocketbooks, and our bedrock environmental laws. In what they have coined as ‘the largest deregulatory agenda in American history,’ President Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin have issued rollbacks of air, water, and toxic chemical regulations that make it easier to build data centers and fossil fuel infrastructure to power them,” said Senator Markey. “Instead of subverting the EPA to Big Tech’s control, Trump and Zeldin should act in the interest of the American people and hold accountable the industries they are obligated to regulate. The public deserves an EPA that lives up to its name.”

Senator Markey’s report pulls back the curtain on the EPA’s abuse of power and failure to fulfill its mission of protecting human health and the environment. Since January 2025, Trump’s EPA has proposed and finalized rollbacks to undermine longstanding public health guardrails, explicitly and repeatedly naming data centers as a key beneficiary. And beyond these individual regulatory rollbacks, Zeldin has refused to contemplate any nationwide standards for data centers, despite increasing evidence of the harm that data centers and their related power infrastructure inflict on U.S. communities.

The cost of unfettered data center buildout is a real, present danger to the public. Air pollution associated with data centers in the United States caused an estimated $6.7 billion in public-health costs in 2023 and is projected to reach $20 billion by 2028. The EPA’s deregulatory blitz will only exacerbate this harm as communities have less protection and less input.

Senator Markey has been the leading voice against irresponsible and unregulated data center buildout at the expense of public health and the environment.

• In July, Senator Markey released a discussion draft of his Protecting Communities Against Data Center Impacts proposal, a bill that would create a national framework to prevent increased energy costs, pollution, and adverse health harms related to the rapid buildout of data centers and associated fossil fuel infrastructure.
• In June, Senator Markey wrote to EPA Administrator Zeldin to demand the withdrawal of a proposed rule that undermines Clean Air Act permitting standards to facilitate the buildout of data centers and associated fossil fuel infrastructure.
• In June, Senator Markey reintroduced his Artificial Intelligence (AI) Environmental Impacts Act, legislation that would require data center operators to report the full range of their facilities’ environmental impacts.
• In November 2025, Senator Markey wrote to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) urging the agency to ensure that increased and projected energy demand from data centers does not result in unjust or unreasonable rate hikes for American households.
• In September 2025, Senator Markey wrote to the EPA in opposition to the agency’s initial announcement of plans to roll back the NSR program for data center buildout.
• In July 2025, Senator Markey hosted a roundtable discussion titled The Data Center Next Door: Hidden Costs and Harms of Artificial Intelligence and Cryptomining to highlight the adverse environmental, health, climate, and energy cost impacts of data center proliferation in communities across the United States, and to condemn the deregulatory actions set forth in President Trump’s AI Action Plan. On the day of the roundtable, Senator Markey also released a storybook to spotlight the experiences of American families living with data centers in their backyard.

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