45 data center projects blocked in one quarter, for $68 billion

Data Center Watch's figures for the second quarter of 2026 measure local opposition across the U.S., without changing long-term investment forecasts.

The riparian opposition to data centres has long been treated as a local anecdote. Data from the Data Center Watch research group, relayed on September 21, gives it an order of magnitude: 45 projects worth $68 billion were blocked or delayed in the United States in the second quarter of 2026 alone.

The reasons given by residents are now well identified: electricity and water consumption, land tenure, noise pollution. These challenges go through municipal planning procedures, remedies and moratoria, and they arrive earlier and earlier in the project schedule — sometimes even before the permit is filed.

However, this brake remains local. The sectoral projections referred to in the same report still contain $32 trillion in cumulative investment in data centres by 2050. In other words, the opposition moves projects and lengthens their schedule, but does not question the overall trajectory.