45 US data centre projects worth $68bn blocked or delayed in Q2

Local opposition blocked or delayed some 45 data centre projects worth $68 billion in the United States between April and June. The figures come from the research group Data Center Watch and were reported by Bloomberg on Monday, September 21.

Those 45 were more than half of all the new large-scale developments the group began tracking in the quarter. The AI build-out already had a chip problem and a power problem. It now plainly has a neighbours problem as well.

The number went down. The problem did not.

Look at the trend before reading too much into $68 billion. For the first quarter, Data Center Watch counted at least 75 projects worth roughly $130 billion disrupted, which it said roughly matched the scale of all of 2025 in three months. The second-quarter total is about half that.

So is the backlash fading? The other figures say no. The group now counts 843 opposition groups across 49 states, Hawaii being the exception. Its first report, covering May 2024 to March 2025, found 142 groups in 24 states. One petition against a project in Tennessee has passed 500,000 signatures on Change.org.

"New groups continue to emerge, opposition is appearing across a wide range of states and jurisdictions, and online petition signatures continue to grow," Miquel Vila, the group's lead analyst, told Bloomberg.

One plausible explanation for the lower dollar figure is timing. Bloomberg reports that communities are now pushing through moratoriums on new construction, "often before developers can apply for permissions." A project that is never proposed cannot be counted as blocked. That is our inference. We have not seen the second-quarter report itself, only Bloomberg's account of it.

From town halls to statehouses

The fight has moved up a level. Some 30 statehouses introduced or adopted rules on data centre siting, electricity and water, Bloomberg reports. The first-quarter report recorded more than 300 state data centre bills filed in the first six weeks of 2026, statewide moratorium proposals in 14 states, and a ban in Maine that came within one House vote of passing.

The largest cloud companies, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Alphabet, argue in Bloomberg's summary that they need the facilities to win a race against China in AI. That argument carries weight in Washington. It carries less at a county meeting about water and electricity.

How to read these numbers

Some care is needed. Data Center Watch's method, as set out in its first report, is to review "local media, government filings, petitions, social media, and official statements." It calls a project blocked when development "has been definitively halted," through a permit denial or a withdrawal in the face of opposition. A project is delayed when its timeline has been disrupted while the developer still seeks approval. The group adds that some figures "reflect estimates that may change."

The $68 billion lumps the two categories together, and a delayed project may still be built. In the first report the split was $18 billion blocked against $46 billion delayed, so delays were the larger part. The pages we read do not say who funds the group.

Who gains, who loses

Developers with permits already in hand gain, because approved sites become scarcer. Places that say yes gain too, and Vila's second remark matters here: "the US has generally been at the forefront, but the phenomenon is increasingly becoming global." The losers are the companies whose AI plans assume that capacity will arrive on schedule. Every model launch and every enterprise contract that depends on new computing capacity rests on a building somewhere getting its permit.

What to watch

Data Center Watch's full second-quarter report should show how the $68 billion divides between blocked and delayed, and which states account for most of it. The next round of state legislative sessions will show whether moratorium proposals become law anywhere. Maine came within a single vote last time.