QTS and Vantage said nearby residents would receive information on project ownership and the facilities’ electricity and water consumption.
The pledge covers electricity and water consumption at the facilities and information about who owns the projects. That would give host communities details about both the resources used at the sites and the entities behind the developments.
The announcement comes as data center energy arrangements draw policy attention. A March 4 White House proclamation said seven technology companies had accepted a separate Ratepayer Protection Pledge. Its terms call on participants to secure new electricity resources for their data centers, pay for required power-delivery upgrades and negotiate separate rates with utilities. The published commitments do not specify direct payments to residents.
Local scrutiny has also reached ballots. Ballotpedia listed at least 49 local measures related to data centers across 13 states in 2026, with 41 scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 3. A City of Lancaster summary of two proposed campuses lists $20 million for community funds and a water cap, as described in EconoTimes’ coverage of the Lancaster proposal.
In analysis cited in that coverage, Brookings Director of the Center for Technology Innovation and Senior Fellow in Governance Studies Nicol Turner Lee and West recommended publishing measurable job and tax estimates, tracking community benefits and accounting for tax breaks and projects that never begin operating. They also noted that Cleveland has used community benefit agreements for economic-development projects since 2013.
The pledge involves two businesses associated with Blackstone, whose wider data center investments offer a measure of the sector’s scale. Bloomberg reported that Blackstone’s data-center investments reached $200 billion as of July, including debt and projects under construction. Bloomberg also reported that Blackstone President Jon Gray called artificial intelligence the firm’s most important current investment priority; the firm is building a cloud venture with Google, has invested in OpenAI and has lent against chips from Broadcom and Nvidia.
