When new data center proposals rapidly bubbled up in Ravenna and other parts of Northeast Ohio in 2026, city resident Will Hollingsworth felt a push to get involved.
“I have moral obligations. I have environmental obligations,” Hollingsworth says. “And as a tech person, I have ethical obligations to where I feel like I need to speak out on this.”
Hollingsworth, who works at Reed Memorial Library, stepped to the podium at a Ravenna City Council meeting in April to share their story with a crowded room of council members and concerned residents. Hollingsworth once worked as a programmer who trained an artificial intelligence program to eventually replace their position at a mattress company. In their speech, they detailed research about data centers’ energy demands on local electrical grids, extensive use of water used to cool servers and environmental concerns around the Great Lakes Basin amid a global rise in artificial intelligence use…