Lee Zeldin, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said the Trump administration won't set nationwide environmental requirements or recommendations for data centers.

Zeldin made the comments Wednesday at a Politico energy summit, saying states and communities should set their own regulations.

"Ten times out of 10, I'm not going to sit inside of an agency building in Washington, D.C., and that we say that we know that local community in Georgia or Florida or Arizona or elsewhere better than everyone there locally," Zeldin said.

A Politico poll found that just 37% of Americans would support a data center in their area, citing issues with high water usage and air pollution.

Zeldin said many closed-loop data centers don't use a lot of water. He also noted the ratepayer protection pledge developed by President Donald Trump.

Under the terms of the nonbinding pledge, the companies agree to build or buy new sources of power generation for their data centers and cover the expense of infrastructure upgrades.

The companies could also sell excess power generation to utilities for public consumption, in addition to negotiating separate rate structures with public utilities and states, ensuring those costs are not passed on to consumers.

The pledge also commits tech companies to making backup generation available to prevent blackouts in times of emergency and to hire locally for their data center build-out.

"While we hear these stories of the worst-case data center that is most controversial and has the most amount of opposition, we might hear less about the data center that is following all the best practices," Zeldin said.

"It is important, as more builds are getting done, that they are following those best practices, not the worst practices," Zeldin added.

"You can't just across the board act as if every data center project is equal, like they're all following the same exact model in how they power their project in various ways, or how they cool their data center, so it really depends on how the deal gets done," Zeldin continued.

Outside of granting permits, Zeldin said the EPA typically plays only an advisory role.

"EPA is not the party that is negotiating and or mediating or refereeing that deal that gets struck between the parties, but we are happy to engage as much as we possibly can to share that technical expertise and the best practices from what we're seeing elsewhere around the country," Zeldin said.