From Brownfield to Data Center: Why Environmental Strategy Belongs in the Development Plan
by Gregory R. Wall, Paul T. Nyffeler, PhD, Katherine Kulbok, Hunton Andrews Kurth The Nickel Report/National Law Review
October 20, 2026
Demand for data center capacity is rewriting the rules of site selection. With interconnection queues stretching for years, power has become the scarcest input, and properties once discounted because of known or suspected contamination can offer infrastructure support that greenfield sites often cannot. This includes large tracts of industrially zoned land that already have transmission, substations, water, and transportation access. Additionally, federal, state, and local funding and tax benefits may be available to encourage development of these brownfield sites. For many developers, the question is no longer whether to consider a brownfield, but how to do it without inheriting its problems.
The federal government is encouraging this shift in perspective and practice. Executive Order 14318, Accelerating Federal Permitting of Data Center Infrastructure, directed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to identify brownfield and Superfund sites that could support data center projects. Following issuance of its Guidance on the Redevelopment of Superfund and Brownfield Sites as AI Data Centers in January 2026, EPA has expanded its mapping tools to screen Superfund sites and large brownfields with potential for data center reuse. These projects are already happening. On its website, EPA highlights a data center built on two former textile and manufacturing brownfields in North Carolina, supported in part by EPA funds for brownfield activities. In California, a developer converted a former semiconductor manufacturing Superfund site into a data center after years of groundwater remediation.
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For the entire article, see I can’t think of any former California semiconductor plant that has been converted to a data center? Has anyone?
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Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
A project of the Pacific Studies Center
LSiegel@cpeo.org
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650-961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org
Author: DISTURBING THE WAR: The Inside Story of the Movement to Get Stanford University out of Southeast Asia - 1965–1975 (See http://a3mreunion.org)
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