Data centers are surging—but so are the protests against them

Across the country, data center demand and construction have been skyrocketing throughout 2025.

And so has local opposition to those projects. 

From Indiana (where a developer withdrew its application to build a data center on more than 700 acres of farmland after local opposition) to Georgia (where now at least eight municipalities have passed moratoriums on data center development), residents and politicians are pushing back against the water- and energy-hungry sites.

Between late March through June of this year alone, 20 data center projects, representing about $98 billion in investments, were blocked or delayed in the United States, according to a new report from Data Center Watch, a project from the AI security and intelligence firm 10a Labs. 

That number is higher than all of the data center disruptions the research group had tracked in the two years prior to its most recent report.

A turning point against data centers

Data Center Watch began keeping tabs on this trend in 2023, and released its first report earlier this year, covering 2023 through the first quarter of 2025. In that time frame, 16 projects, worth $64 billion, were blocked or delayed. 

Though a project may be cancelled for myriad reasons, these were cases where local opposition was reported to have played some role in the decision, says Miquel Vila, an analyst at the Data Center Watch project. 

In the second quarter of 2025, that opposition surged 125%. “We were expecting a few more cases,” Vila says of Q2, “but not 20.”

One important caveat, Vila notes, is that the data center industry is booming; it makes sense that opposition would, too. But even accounting for record high construction spend, he sees these recent numbers as a “turning point” in the trend. 

What’s wrong with data centers?

Tech giants are building out data centers at a rapid pace to meet the enormous power needs of artificial intelligence (AI).

But data centers have faced local criticism because of the resources they consume, like water (which is especially a concern in scarce regions like Arizona) and energy (which has been linked to rising electricity prices across the country.) 

Along with water use and utility prices, communities have also taken issue with noise, landmark preservation, and transparency, Vila adds—like if it isn’t clear who the end user of a data center will be.

Data Center Watch has found 188 community groups that have formed to fight data center projects. Between March and June alone, 53 active groups across 17 states were targeting 30 data center projects. 

Amid that pushback, lawmakers have also been reconsidering their regions’ tax subsidies to data centers, as well as regulations around zoning, and the projects’ environmental impacts.

That community opposition is even causing some lawmakers to change their regulations or hold off on building data centers in the future.

“Local opposition is having an impact in the regulatory landscape of data centers,” Vila says. 

Dan Diorio, vice president of state policy for the industry group Data Center Coalition, said in a statement that it continues to see “significant interest” across the country for “responsible data center projects,” and said such projects create jobs, economic investment, and local tax revenue.

He added that the coalition’s members are committed to community engagement, stakeholder education, and to working with policymakers and regulatory bodies.

“Data centers are also committed to being responsible and responsive neighbors in the communities where they operate,” Diorio said.

Data centers and politics

Data center opposition has become a talking point in recent political races. 

In Virginia—the biggest data center market in the world—Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger campaigned in part on making sure data centers pay “their fair share,” and on addressing rising electricity prices. 

In Georgia, Peter Hubbard—who was elected to the state’s Public Service Commission, which regulates its utilities—has specifically highlighted how data centers can drive up people’s energy bills. Georgia is increasingly becoming a data center hotbed, and is in fact the second-largest such market in the world.

But while both those politicians are Democrats, data center opposition is a bipartisan issue, Data Center Watch found. Both blue and red states are rethinking incentives to developers or tightening their rules around such projects. 

That tracks with other research about data center support: a recent Heatmap poll found that only 44% of Americans would welcome a data center near them. 

Looking ahead

Data Center Watch plans to keep an eye on project delays and cancellations going forward. 

Already, it seems the trend is continuing into Q3: In one prominent example, Amazon’s proposed Project Blue data center, was rejected by Tucson, Arizona’s town council in August. 

(In Data Center Watch’s latest report, two of the 20 affected projects were from Amazon: one in Becker, Minnesota, which was suspended as lawmakers reconsidered tax incentives, and one in King George, Virginia, which was delayed because of legal issues and resident pushback.)

Vila expects data center opposition to keep growing—and to increasingly become a part of project calculations.

“Before, local opposition was more of an anecdotal possibility,” he says. “Now, it’s becoming a core feature of development . . . in the same way issues like land, energy, and water are taken into account.” 

View the full article