January 14, 2026 - Data Centers and mining go hand in hand, both because of the minerals and materials vital to build them, and because of the vast amounts of energy needed to run them. So let’s take a closer look at data centers, which are now in the headlines every day.

Microsoft yesterday announced a Community-First AI Infrastructure Initiative, which will have the company paying more for the electricity that serves its data centers, including paying for associated infrastructure costs. Microsoft said when making the announcement, “Especially when tech companies are so profitable, we believe that it’s both unfair and politically unrealistic for our industry to ask the public to shoulder added electricity costs for AI. Instead, we believe the long-term success of AI infrastructure requires that tech companies pay their own way for the electricity costs they create.”

President Trump clearly agrees, writing in a Truth Social post earlier this week, quote, “I never want Americans to pay higher Electricity bills because of Data Centers,” Trump wrote.

And there is a column in today’s Wall Street Journal that comments on widespread backlash against data centers and their impact on both rising electricity bills and the environment saying in part, “Data center moratoriums are the new fracking bans.”

The column smartly goes on to observe that the current energy debacle we’re in—which includes the challenge of meeting data center power needs--is very much in part due to the fact that, in the past decade, reliable coal and nuclear power generation were dismantled faster than they could be replaced with reliable alternatives and, quote, “too many CEOs failed to challenge energy policies they knew were unworkable.”  End quote.

We have a chance to fix those policies now and make smart choices that support the growth of the technologies of the future.