you can say something like data centers are using as much electricity as if 33% new people started living in Nebraska. they are like our new neighbors. A new county of benevolent super-smart scientists in a data center.
I understood your point when I read it, and it didn't bother me. But the term inadvertently triggers a different hot-button issue in people's minds, so I think a clearer term might have been "marginal population increase".
I think triggering that hot-button issue was the point - the OP was likely expecting that people who are vehemently anti-data-center are also vehemently pro-immigration (which is probably an accurate generalization). So talking about the resource use of data centers by comparing to the resource use of immigrants has the potential to force cognitive dissonance in anti-data-center people who might otherwise use data center resource use as a straightforward talking point.
