How We Build: Data Centers & Energy Infrastructure
The fight over data centers isn't pro versus anti-AI. RIL hosted founders, labor, policymakers, and investors in one room to work through the real tradeoffs.
About this working session
Communities in 35 states are pushing back on data centers — making them among the most contested building projects in America. The fight runs through power grids, water, land use, and community trust.
On June 22, 2026, RIL brought together founders, investors, labor leaders, policymakers, and community advocates in San Francisco to work through the real tradeoffs.
Five takeaways, consistent with Chatham House.
First, this room was rare. You came as startup builders, investors, labor leaders, policymakers, funders, community advocates, and skeptics. So many competing views seldom share one space, stay in the conversation start to finish, and then hang out afterwards. Thank you for bringing candor and constructive disagreement to a hard conversation. Onto the takeaways, which will inform how RIL maps our go forward work.
1. The politics of data centers are local, and clean energy is one of the strongest levers.
2. Earning a community's yes is relationship work, and it starts early.
3. The closest allies and the real upside are both undervalued.
4. What one convening cannot settle, and the conversations that come next.
5. Many open questions, and the work RIL is taking on next.
See the full write-up by RIL's Executive Director, Gaurab Bansal, here.
