Analysis & explainers
Deep dives on the forces shaping data center development — capacity markets, moratoriums, corporate strategy, and the numbers behind your electric bill.
New Jersey Fined Vineland's Data Center $1.07 Million. The Order Gives It 45 Days, Not a Shutdown.
NJDEP's order against DataOne is five pages long, and it says more than the headlines about it. The $1,072,000 penalty covers 62 gas engines installed and run without permits. The company has 45 days to file permit applications, and the engines only have to stop if it misses that filing deadline. Here is what the order requires, what it leaves open, and what Vineland residents can check next.
Week in Review: New Jersey's Record Data Center Fine, Prince William County Ends By-Right Approval, and Palm Beach County Passes a Moratorium — Then Cuts Its Own Resident Task Force
This week New Jersey hit a Vineland data center with its largest-ever civil penalty over 62 unpermitted gas generators, Prince William County, Virginia ended by-right approval for new data centers countywide, and Texas's attorney general opened an investigation into hundreds of data centers that never answered a mandatory water-use survey. A Republican and a Democrat in Congress each introduced NDA-transparency bills the same week, Memphis-area residents filed two separate lawsuits against an xAI data center in one week, and Palm Beach County passed a year-long moratorium — then scrapped its own resident task force in favor of paid consultants. Plus: nine more communities paused or banned data centers in the past seven days.
Newsom Signed Seven Data Center Bills. None of Them Has a Threshold Yet.
On September 21, Governor Newsom signed seven data center bills into law -- the same package he blocked a year ago. The laws shift grid upgrade costs to operators, mandate water and energy disclosure, and strip a blanket environmental exemption. But every dollar figure and megawatt trigger is delegated to future CPUC rulemaking, with no filing deadline. Here is what each bill actually requires, what it leaves to regulators, and what a community can use right now.
Trump Announced an AI Force. The Same Week, His Own Pollster Said Data Centers Are a Losing Issue.
On September 19, President Trump announced an 'AI Force' modeled on the Space Force and promised an AI czar. Four days earlier, his own pollster told Republican candidates that unqualified support for data centers is 'a losing position.' The same weekend, Texas froze all data center environmental permits and California signed seven data center laws. What actually happened, and what it means for communities heading into a hearing.
Two Georgia Data Center Lawsuits in Five Days, and Neither One Argues the Project Is a Bad Idea
Residents in Statesboro and Effingham County, Georgia filed separate Superior Court challenges to data center decisions between September 17 and 21. One attacks a rezoning, the other attacks how a development authority kept OpenAI's deal quiet. Both lean on process rather than on whether a data center belongs there, and both started on a clock.
Climate Week Put Amazon's Texas Gas Plant on the Agenda. Its Developer Is Already Pitching the Next County.
During Climate Week NYC, Amazon workers and Bill McKibben pointed at the 35-turbine gas plant Amazon is financing in Pecos County, Texas. The same week, that plant's developer met Brewster County officials about a second off-grid data center and gas plant in the Glass Mountains. What a county in that position should know about the claims on both sides.
Loudoun County Did Not Pause Data Centers. It Voted to Draft a Pause.
The world's largest data center market voted 7-1-1 on September 15 to direct staff to draft a twelve-month pause. It did not enact one, the formal vote is in October, and the county attorney's memo says a true moratorium is not legal in Virginia at all. Here is the language that survives a county attorney, and the application type no pause can touch.
Week in Review: Virginia's Governor Cracks Down on Data Centers Statewide, a New Jersey Site Spills Diesel Into the Meadowlands, and a Judge Exempts One Developer From a North Carolina Ban
This week Ohio crossed 125 active local data-center moratoriums with 18 more communities voting in November, a North Carolina judge let one developer's project proceed despite the county's standing ban because it had vested rights before the ban took effect, and Virginia's governor rolled out the most sweeping statewide data-center rules in the country. Plus: a New Jersey data center spilled thousands of gallons of diesel into a Hackensack River tributary, New Mexico's Democratic governor nominee pledged a moratorium while taking data-center donors' money, and Texas's attorney general opens an investigation into a data center proposed on land deeded for a park.
Week in Review: Kentucky Bans Data Centers for Good, a Virginia Farmer Loses His Land, and the EPA Moves to Cut the Public Out of Air Permits
This week Woodford County, Kentucky became the state's first county to permanently ban data center construction, Chatham County, Georgia enacted a 155-day pause to study one, and a Virginia judge upheld a county's eminent-domain taking of a farmer's land for a water project residents fear is really for a data center. Plus: the EPA's push to drop the federal requirement that states take public comment before approving many air permits, a Microsoft-tied New Jersey site caught running 45 generators with no permit at all, and more than ten states start ripping up the tax breaks they handed data centers.
Sixteen Nebraska Counties Paused Data Centers. The Legislature Spent the Same Year Clearing the Way.
Nebraska now has 19 data center moratorium entries on our tracker — 16 enacted, two proposed, one withdrawn — almost all of them county-level and almost all of them passed in 2026. Over the same months, the Legislature passed and the governor signed a law narrowing public power's eminent domain authority to make room for privately built generation serving loads above 1,000 megawatts. Both things are true at once, and if you live in southeast Nebraska they are about the same project.
California Vetoed a Water Disclosure Bill in 2025. Now Seven Data Center Bills Are on the Governor's Desk.
California now has 23 data center moratoriums on our national tracker — from the Salton Sea to the San Francisco Bay. The state legislature has sent Governor Newsom seven bills covering ratepayer protection, mandatory CEQA review, and water disclosure. Last year he vetoed a milder version of the water bill. The question now is whether the political landscape has shifted enough to change his answer.
New Hampshire Has No Hyperscale Data Center. Four of Its Towns Restricted Them Anyway.
Nottingham voted 1,335-143 for a 12-month data center moratorium on September 8, in a state with no hyperscale data center and no pending project in town. Canterbury banned them outright, Rochester zoned them into a landfill district, and a bill that would have voided all of it was tabled 304-11. A catalog of what each legal instrument costs and buys.
Michigan Has 64 Data Center Moratoriums, a Recall Wave, and a Congressional Delegation That Voted Both Ways
Michigan now has the second-most data center moratoriums in the country. Detroit's mayor has refused to adopt one the city council passed. A township that rejected its moratorium is now recalling the board members who voted no. And the state's House delegation voted to preempt all local data center regulation — then pivoted.
Ohio Went from Zero Data Center Moratoriums to 60 in One Year. Here Is What Happened.
Ohio now has the second-most data center moratoriums in the country — 60 local actions plus a state-level tax exemption freeze — behind only New Jersey. The wave started in late 2025 and shows no sign of slowing, with Cleveland, Cincinnati, and dozens of smaller communities pausing permits while the state legislature studies the issue.
Microsoft Signed the Ratepayer Pledge. Then It Sued to Avoid Paying.
In January 2026 Microsoft became the first company to sign the White House's ratepayer protection pledge, promising that data center growth would not raise household electricity bills. Eight months later it is fighting cost-recovery orders in Virginia's Supreme Court and at FERC in Wisconsin. The pledge has no enforcement mechanism. The lawsuits do.
Week in Review: Amazon Withdraws a Virginia Water Permit, Maryland's Two Counties Split on Moratoriums, and Georgia Residents Sue Over a Secret NDA
This week Amazon withdrew a groundwater permit for its 869-acre King George County, Virginia campus two days after a newspaper asked about it, Montgomery County's toughest moratorium challenger backed down while neighboring Baltimore County moved to extend its own pause through 2027, and Effingham County, Georgia residents sued over a zoning ordinance they say cleared the way for OpenAI's data center behind a signed NDA. Plus: West Virginia certifies a second $12 billion data center in one county under a law that skips local review, a South Carolina town moves preemptively, and data centers become a Texas governor's-race issue.
Virginia Has Three Data Center Votes in the Next Five Weeks. Here Is What Each One Can and Cannot Do.
Loudoun votes on pause options September 15 and on 23 grandfathered projects October 6; Fairfax's Planning Commission hears the Plaza 500 substation September 24. Behind them sits a governor who has said no to a statewide pause, a rate class that makes 25 MW customers pay for the grid they reserve, and a Dillon's Rule that limits what any county can actually stop.
North Carolina Added Eight Data Center Pauses in August. Read the Fine Print Before You Cite One.
Eight North Carolina councils and county boards paused data centers in August, or extended a pause that was about to lapse. The terms range from six months to two years, and half of them carry a size threshold or a geographic carve-out that a resident quoting them at a hearing needs to know about.
Four Groups Counted New Jersey's Data Center Bans. They Got 37, 38, 50 and 69.
Three New Jersey towns banned data centers on the same night in late August. Four organizations published a statewide count in the same two weeks and got four different numbers, because they are counting different things. Here is why the discrepancy matters more than any of the four totals — and what to ask your clerk before you cite one at a hearing.
Week in Review: Georgia's Secret OpenAI Contract, New Jersey's New Transparency Law, and a Second California City Bans Data Centers
This week Georgia regulators approved a confidential 3.2-gigawatt contract to power OpenAI's $20 billion Effingham County data center and Sen. Warnock answered with a call for a statewide moratorium, New Jersey's governor signed a law forcing data centers to report their water and energy use, and Coachella became the second California city to ban data centers outright. Plus: a Microsoft-tied New Jersey site accused of running dozens of unpermitted gas turbines, PJM's plan to make data centers bring their own power, and ten more communities that paused or banned data centers in a single week.
The Power Plant Is Now Part of the Data Center — and the Public Notice for It Is Being Deleted
Three things landed in the same week. Global Energy Monitor counted 189 GW of U.S. gas capacity in development tied to data centers — nearly double the figure six months earlier. Ceres put a number on the water those power plants use, which is the part of a data center's water footprint nobody meters. And EPA moved to delete the federal requirement that states give public notice on the air permits those plants need. Read together, they describe one shift: the generator is now part of the project, and the process for the generator is the process being narrowed.
Trump Says Your Town Is "Making a Mistake." Here's What the Record Actually Shows.
In an interview that aired August 23, President Trump said communities rejecting data centers are "making a mistake" and that the industry could be "bigger than oil." That doubles down on eighteen months of federal policy — permitting orders, federal land, a FERC interconnection push, and a 300-signatory ratepayer pledge with no enforcement mechanism. We walk through what the administration has actually done, what reporters and analysts across the spectrum say about it, and what none of it changes about the vote in front of your planning board.
Week in Review: Pennsylvania's Crackdown, New Jersey's Ban Wave, and Nevada Says No to a Dry Basin
This week Pennsylvania's governor signed what Bloomberg Law called the strictest data center executive order in the country, New Jersey towns kept banning data centers faster than developers could sue over it, and Nevada regulators banned new data centers outright in an over-appropriated water basin. Plus: Kansas cities suing their own residents over ballot petitions, a DeKalb County win, and Michigan's moratorium fight goes to court.
Pennsylvania Just Told Data Centers: Build Your Own Power, or Don't Build Here
Governor Shapiro signed Executive Order 2026-05 on August 18, establishing the nation's strictest permitting standards for data centers. The GRID framework requires developers to fund their own power infrastructure, obtain local approval before any state permit, and sign enforceable community benefit agreements — or face the slowest permitting lane in the state.
Data Center Opposition Just Became a National Political Force
Axios reports that data center opposition is scrambling the 2026 midterms. Candidates in both parties are racing to distance themselves from projects their own leaders spent years courting. What started as scattered local fights has become a cross-partisan national movement — and it's changing how elections are won.
How to Negotiate with Every Major Data Center Developer: A Strategy Guide
We've built negotiation profiles for all 17 major data center operators — from Google and Amazon to CoreWeave and xAI. Here's what the patterns reveal: who has actually conceded terms, who hasn't, and where your leverage really sits.
Week in Review: Amazon Walks Away, UK Rations Water, and Texas Hits the Brakes
This week Amazon abandoned a data center campus in Maryland after community pushback, UK data centers faced water rationing during a drought, and Texas launched an audit of 300 data center projects. Plus: Michigan residents sued over noise, Chicago signed an executive order, and moratorium proposals multiplied from Indiana to San Antonio.
Texas Just Froze 474 GW of Data Center Interconnections. Here's What It Means.
On August 3, Governor Abbott directed ERCOT and the PUC of Texas to halt all data center interconnection progress pending a comprehensive audit. The queue holds roughly 474 GW of requests — five times the state's record peak demand — and about 90% of them are data centers. It may be the single most consequential action any government has taken against the data center buildout.
Amazon's New Texas Data Center Could Become the Single Biggest Polluter in America
Amazon confirmed it's investing in a 35-turbine, 7.65-gigawatt gas plant to power a new Texas data center — permitted to emit up to 33 million tons of CO2 a year, more than any power plant operating in the U.S. today. Because it won't initially connect to the wider grid, it also won't go through a utility rate case — which means the usual ratepayer-impact fight isn't where the leverage is this time.
20 Million Chips Today, 200 Million by 2028: What the Times' AI Numbers Mean for Your County
The Times went looking for a way to describe the scale of the AI build-out and landed on comparisons to the railroads and the Manhattan Project. The chip count — doubling roughly every nine months — is the number that explains why the pipeline of new proposals isn't slowing down. Here's what the rest of the numbers mean if you're the one facing the next one.
Do Data Centers Lower Property Values? What the Studies Actually Show
It's the first question at every hearing: will a data center tank my home's value? The honest answer isn't the scary one or the industry one. The headline studies say "no measurable drag" — but most were commissioned by developers, measure average distance rather than the house across the street, and come from hot markets where everything appreciates. Here's what the evidence really says, and the move that beats arguing about it.
How to Unmask the Shell Company Behind a Data Center
A project lands in your town under a code name — "Project Blue," "Project Rowan" — bought by an LLC no one has heard of. That anonymity is a strategy, not an accident. Here's the five-step method to find the hyperscaler actually behind it, worked through the real chain of shell companies that hid Amazon behind Tucson's Project Blue — and why naming them changes your leverage.
How Many Jobs Does a Data Center Actually Create?
Every data center pitch leads with jobs — usually thousands of them. The number that actually matters is far smaller and fully knowable: a typical hyperscale hall runs on about 50 full-time workers, half of them contractors. Here's the real math from Virginia's own legislative watchdog, the construction mirage behind the big headline, and the three questions that put it on the record.
"The A.I. Revolt Is Here": When Ezra Klein Covers Your Zoning Fight, the Politics Have Changed
The Ezra Klein Show's August 4 episode is titled "The A.I. Revolt Is Here," and its subject is data centers — the bipartisan opposition, Hochul's New York moratorium, and the 100-plus moratorium proposals nationwide. When the country's flagship policy podcast frames local zoning fights as a national political force, the leverage map has changed. Here's what the episode covers, what our own tracker shows, and why this moment favors communities that are ready to negotiate.
The $327 Million Guess That Became $2.5 Billion: States Are Finally Learning What Data Center Tax Breaks Cost
Four states now lose more than $1 billion a year to data center sales-tax exemptions — and every one of them originally projected a fraction of that. Georgia revised its estimate up 664% in one January. Ohio's real cost came in at 12 times its projection. Indiana admitted 83% of its subsidy went to one company: Amazon. Fourteen states still won't publish a number at all. Here's what the June 2026 Good Jobs First report found, and what it means for the fiscal-note fight in your county.
Before You Approve a Data Center: 26 Questions Every Community Should Ask
A working synthesis of the checklists published by RFD-TV, Public Knowledge, EDF, the AI Now Institute, and the Alliance for the Great Lakes — collapsed into 26 questions, grouped by topic, with the reason each one matters and what a good answer looks like. Print it, bring it to the hearing, ask them all.
"Meta pays the full cost." Louisiana ratepayers pay $8–13 a month. Both are true.
Meta's Hyperion campus in rural Louisiana is now a 5-gigawatt, $50-billion-plus build — powered by ten new Entergy gas plants and a 60-mile transmission line whose $470M+ cost falls on ordinary customers. Meta says it pays the full cost of its electricity. State watchdogs say average Entergy Louisiana households will still pay $8–13 more per month. Both can be true. Here's how.
Five Auctions, $29 Billion: How Data Centers Took Over the PJM Capacity Market — and Sent Your Bill to the Moon
PJM's capacity auction price has gone from $29/MW-day to $325 in four years. Data centers drove 46% of the cost — $29.4 billion — across those auctions, and the grid's independent watchdog says ratepayers are footing the bill for power plants that may never be needed. Here's the full timeline, who pays, and the three reform proposals on the table right now.
One Project, Two Stories: How Data Center Developers Shop the Gaps Between Agencies
In Tucker County, West Virginia, one developer told the DEP it controlled 10,000 acres — and told the Department of Commerce its project was merely "conceptual." Both agencies say there's no contradiction, because neither one reviews the whole project. That gap isn't a West Virginia quirk. It's the buildout's default operating mode, and it shows up in seven recognizable forms — from "nonroad engine" turbine exemptions in Memphis to shell-company NDAs in Wisconsin to by-right zoning in Virginia. Here's the taxonomy, and the questions that close each gap.
DOE Just Named Data Centers the #1 Reason America Needs New Power Lines. Here's Why Your Community Should Read the Fine Print.
The Department of Energy's draft 2026 National Transmission Needs Study makes it official: load growth — led by data centers — is now the main reason the U.S. needs new transmission. Congestion already adds $11 billion a year to wholesale power costs, tens of billions in new lines are approved, and the study feeds directly into federal corridor designations that can override local siting authority. Public comments are open until September 7, 2026 — and the draft is full of numbers communities can use.
They Figured This Out Fifty Years Ago: What Oil, Wind, and Pipeline Towns Already Know About Protecting Neighbors
Property-value guarantees, voluntary buyouts, and community dividend funds aren't new ideas — they're battle-tested tools from decades of oil, wind, and pipeline fights. Data center communities are just the latest to need them, and the first to have the leverage to demand them all at once.
One in Five Electrons: BNEF Says Data Centers Will Consume 20% of U.S. Power by 2035
BloombergNEF just raised its U.S. data-center power forecast by 83% — to 194 GW by 2035 — meaning one out of every five units of electricity generated in the country would flow to a data center. With hyperscalers on track to spend $700 billion this year and 124 GW of on-site gas plants in the pipeline, the energy system your community depends on is being reshaped in real time.
Amazon Says It Picks Sites Where the Grid Needs Help. Here's What Communities Should Hear.
In a Latitude Media interview, Amazon's energy chief laid out a sophisticated site-selection strategy — picking locations where new load 'benefits the grid,' pledging full cost coverage, and touting a 52% water-efficiency gain. The claims are worth understanding, because the playbook is coming to a town near you.
A $15B Data Center Made Wisconsin Farmers Millionaires — and the Same Playbook Is Headed for 10 More Markets
In Port Washington, Vantage's $15B OpenAI–Oracle Stargate campus turned farmland into a lottery ticket — some sellers cleared millions, some wish they'd held out, and the neighbors who didn't sell face eminent domain. It's also a preview: the same power-first, low-opposition playbook is now spreading to 10 emerging markets, from Reno to Tulsa to New Mexico's $165B Stargate site.
Morgan Stanley Says Community Opposition Is the Biggest Threat to the Data Center Buildout. Are They Right?
Morgan Stanley warns that $156B in data center projects were canceled or delayed in 2025, with another $130B disrupted in Q1 2026 — driven by community resistance. We checked their thesis against our data.
New York Just Changed the Game: What EO 62 Means for Every Community Fighting a Data Center
Governor Hochul signed the nation's first statewide data center moratorium on July 14 — a 1-year pause on 50+ MW facilities that sets a precedent for community negotiating power nationwide.
Why Your Electric Bill Is Going Up — and What Data Centers Have to Do With It
Capacity charges, peak load auctions, and the coincident-peak trap: a plain-language guide to the parts of your electric bill you've never heard of — and why data center growth is making them explode.
How the Industry Files Your Protest: 'Social License' and the $64B Risk Column
Data-center developers don't have a risk category called 'protests.' They have 'social license to operate' — and organized community opposition has now blocked or delayed an estimated $64 billion in projects. Here's how the industry actually scores the risk that you'll show up to a hearing.
The Moratorium Wave: Why 14 States Are Pressing Pause on Data Centers
From Virginia's Loudoun County to rural Indiana, a rolling wave of moratorium bills and local zoning freezes is reshaping where the next generation of AI data centers can be built.
The Hidden Water Cost of Your AI Query: What the Data Actually Shows
A single ChatGPT query uses about 18 mL of water — roughly a medicine-cup pour. Multiply by billions of daily queries and the numbers start to matter, especially in water-stressed regions.
233 GW of Demand Is Waiting in Line: Inside ERCOT's Data Center Queue
Texas's grid operator has 233 GW of large-load interconnection requests — roughly three times the state's current peak demand. Most of the queue is data centers. Here's what it means.