# Joel Makower

Joel Makower writes and speaks about sustainability, including the environmental impacts of AI and data centers. He also moderates discussions and events on sustainable infrastructure and sustainability in the music industry.

- Profile: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/creators/joel-makower/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/makower
- LinkedIn followers: 124,175
- Topics: artificial-intelligence
- Based on 12 dated posts, latest 2026-09-15

## Summary

Useful for moderating B2B discussions and framing sustainability questions on AI, data centers, and infrastructure.

- Best for: Climate tech or data center infrastructure brands needing a credible webinar or advisory collaborator.
- Not for: Consumer sustainable apparel or merch brands seeking paid endorsement and direct-response product sales.
- Check first: Confirm audience composition for comparable AI and data center sessions before committing.

### Takeaways

- AI backlash is a social-license problem, not just an engineering problem.
- $64 billion in US data center projects blocked or delayed since mid-2024.
- 188 local opposition groups across 40 states and 12 states with moratorium bills.

## Main ideas

- **Tech is both a decarbonization enabler and a growing source of emissions**: Makower writes that tech is unusual because it enables every other systems transition, including climate, energy, nature, and supply chains, while also having a rapidly growing footprint. AI is the collision point. They point out that big tech companies' emissions are rising even after public net-zero commitments because skyrocketing compute demand is outpacing efficiency and clean-energy gains. The backlash is unexpected, they argue, because people were not afraid of PCs, smartphones, or the early internet the way they are of data centers and AI. In the U.S., they see this becoming a bipartisan political issue heading into the 2026 midterms because data centers intrude on both red and blue communities.
- **The AI backlash is a social-license problem, not just an engineering problem**: Makower argues that data centers have become the physical manifestation of what people distrust about AI: energy hogs, water guzzlers, noise machines, and job displacers. The numbers they cite show the scale of local opposition, and they say energy gets the headlines while water, land use, noise, and e-waste are less-discussed sleeping giants. The encouraging part, in their view, is that solutions exist across the impact areas. What is missing is disclosure standards, procurement requirements, and the will to do things differently. They add that most enterprise AI buyers have far more leverage over hyperscalers than they are exercising.
- **What a sustainable data center would require: shared goals and missing voices**: Makower co-hosted a closed-door forum for 65 people across hyperscalers, utilities, developers, financiers, certification bodies, investors, and community-engagement specialists. The group agreed on high-bar goals: community agency and buy-in early and often, with community benefit agreements; clean energy and water-positive operations; common standards and transparency; and self-funded initiatives. The group said changes were needed to modernize the grid, include sustainability in procurement conversations, prove and articulate the benefits of AI, and rebuild trust. Makower notes that front-line communities, regulators, and local authorities were missing from the room, and says to ask whether they will be included next time.
- **Measurement is racing ahead of reduction, and applied AI is where the leverage is**: Makower argues that we can now measure emissions and planetary impact far better than we can reduce them, and that accountability infrastructure is ahead of real-world change. They also relay a guest's argument that the most valuable sustainability contributions will not come from consultants or conservation nonprofits using chatbots, which mainly helps organizational efficiency, but from applied AI embedded in industrial systems. That is where the large gains are likely to come from, according to the guest.
- **Practical operational questions, answered in public sessions**: Much of Makower's visible output in this material is as host, moderator, and co-convener rather than as a bylined author. The sessions center on practical questions and named practitioners, not vendor pitches. They moderate and host sessions for the Music Sustainability Alliance and related programmes, covering responsible merch, waste across the music business, and how the music industry should use AI for recordings, concerts, and festivals rather than for creating music itself.

## Work to read

- [The AI backlash is landing on data centers](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/makower_ai-backlash-is-focused-on-data-centers-heres-activity-7465498879686385664-D6DS)
- [What a "sustainable data center" would actually require, from a 65-person closed-door forum](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/makower_sustainable-data-center-a-room-of-rivals-activity-7478502312517201920-BfG7)
- [Tech as both enabler and emitter: a podcast on AI and the energy transition](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/makower_s1e1-why-the-energy-transition-may-already-activity-7492568187428016128-Vn_O)
- [Moderating the music industry's AI question — and its waste problem](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/makower_music-biz-climate-hub-music-and-waste-activity-7501127897890615296-Xv-d)
- [Responsible merch: the costs, timelines, and tradeoffs behind a sustainability claim](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/makower_the-proliferation-of-t-shirts-hoodies-and-activity-7472319796303376384-_T3g)

## Brand relationships

- **Trellis Group** (disclosed_partnership)
- **Music Sustainability Alliance** (disclosed_partnership)
- **REVERB** (mention)
- **The CSO Shop** (mention)
- **Green Music Australia** (mention)

## Partnerships

Across five posts published between May and September 2026, Makower works with organisations in four ways: moderating a panel webinar, hosting a live "fishbowl" session, co-hosting an invitation-only forum, and appearing as a podcast guest. All are event-based, centred on convening, moderating, or joining other speakers rather than publishing sponsored content. The posts provide no sponsorship policy, rate card, audience specification, or official inquiry route. Buyers assessing a paid engagement should ask for those details.

## Alternatives

- Valentina Rappa: Choose Rappa when the session is about measurement and disclosure rather than energy. Rappa's posts explain the mechanics of circularity: the GHG Protocol does not fully account for reuse, refurbishment or remanufacturing, and manufacturing emissions are usually assigned entirely to a product's first owner, even when it is reused and resold several times. Rappa points to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation's proposal to amortise initial manufacturing emissions over an asset's expected life, so companies that keep products in circulation can report the benefit. Rappa also maps the European rules that will force the issue: the Circular Economy Act, the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation and its Digital Product Passports, and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, which covers around 11,000 large companies and requires circular-economy performance to be disclosed. Rappa is the closer match if the sponsor's buyers are sustainability, procurement or finance teams in the built environment seeking to justify a reuse programme, or if the webinar targets EU-facing compliance.
- Dan Brown: Choose Brown when the audience is universities, colleges or public-sector estates, or when the campaign focuses on business travel. Written in RouteZero's voice, Brown's posts describe the challenge in post-16 education: travel is usually the largest part of a university's footprint and is fragmented across bookings, expenses, departments and policies. The work is to turn that scattered data into decisions that hold across estates, finance, procurement, staff, students and leadership. Brown names the questions buyers need to answer, including where travel emissions and cost opportunities actually sit and which reductions people will adopt without slowing academic work. Brown also appears at events where those buyers gather, including the UN Global Compact Network UK annual summit and the EAUC conference. For a sponsor selling travel, campus or reporting tools, Brown speaks to buyers who already have a budget and a mandate for that spend.
- Mikaela Kiner: Choose Kiner when the question shifts from infrastructure to the people who have to build and run it. Kiner's posts draw on recruiting roles at Kaiser Permanente, Microsoft and Amazon, and on the interview question Kiner now asks every time: what do you love doing most, and what would you delegate? Reverb's compensation work also covers gathering market data, benchmarking salary surveys and building transparent pay ranges in the planning window before a hiring year. Kiner is the better moderator for that part of the conversation if the sponsor's webinar targets HR, operations or talent leaders, or if the panel needs to address who will staff a data-centre, grid or climate-tech build-out and how they will be paid.

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AI-assisted summary of public posts. Audience demographics are not available. Engagement appears only where we checked recent posts. Method: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/methodology/