Resistance from local governments to new data center construction has intensified sharply this summer, sending a warning signal to AI giants like Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI that rely on these facilities to expand their computing capacity.
An analysis of thousands of legal documents and local news reports shows that in July alone, more than 150 towns and counties enacted temporary or permanent data center bans, many passed in emergency meetings. As of early August, the total number of active data center bans across the United States has exceeded 500, a sharp rise from the more than 300 counted when the data was first compiled in late June.
Local counties and towns are rejecting projects due to residents' concerns that data centers will drive up electricity bills, consume scarce water resources, and generate significant noise. Supporters argue that the projects bring jobs, investment, and infrastructure upgrades to rural and industrial areas, but this argument has not stemmed the tide of bans.
State governments led by both parties have also begun to follow the lead of cities and counties in imposing restrictions. Last week, Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued an order halting the approval of new data centers pending a state assessment of the potential strain on the public power grid. Texas already hosts several massive AI training data centers, including Lancium's 1.2-gigawatt campus in Abilene, which serves OpenAI, and Oracle and Vantage Data Centers' 1.4-gigawatt Frontier campus in Shackelford County, with many more projects in the planning stages. Abbott stated that the total capacity of grid connection applications received by the state has exceeded 474 gigawatts.
Following Texas, New York Governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, signed an executive order in July imposing a moratorium on the approval of hyperscale data centers with energy consumption of 50 megawatts or more. This is the first statewide data center construction freeze in the U.S. While few projects under construction in New York currently meet this threshold, benchmark projects in other states have far higher energy consumption levels.
Some states have also canceled tax incentives for developers. Over the past month, Massachusetts and Nebraska have followed suit, withdrawing tax incentives for hyperscale computing operators. The vast majority of bans are concentrated in the Midwest and the South. Low land prices and business-friendly policies have attracted developers to establish some of the nation's top data centers in these regions. More than 400 of the current restrictions are located in these two areas, and nearly three-quarters of the new bans enacted in July originated there.
Resistance policies in the southern states are advancing rapidly, with local governments in Georgia, Florida, and Tennessee enacting the most moratoriums last month. Florida led the nation in the pace of policy advancement in July, with 14 of the state's 23 active restrictions added in that month, nearly all at the county level. Compared to states like Ohio and New Jersey, where bans are enacted at the town level, county-level legislation covers a larger land area.
The core of Florida's resistance is in the Panhandle region, where all four of the state's permanent bans have been enacted since June. Data shows that as of early August, 15 administrative districts in Florida are still considering related moratoriums, with numbers expected to rise. While Florida's bans have garnered national media attention, similar measures in sparsely populated rural areas like Iowa and Nebraska have received little exposure.
The Great Plains region, with its abundant cheap farmland, is an ideal location for hyperscale data centers, but local governments there have enacted more than 40 restrictions on data centers since the start of the year. Colorado has become the frontier of data center resistance in the western mountain states, with policies focusing on environmental pressure and water scarcity. More than 19 bans are in effect in the Denver area and the state's mountain rural regions. Neighboring Utah and New Mexico have also begun to introduce data center control measures.
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