Information Technology · Tuesday, 25 August 2026

01 · Briefing · what happened

Neighbours have stalled $130bn of data centres, so the build is moving out of town

Information Technology 3 min 17 sources

Local opposition blocked or delayed 75 US data centre projects in three months. In Europe the block is a ten-year connection queue. Both walls are pushing the AI build-out somewhere else.

$130bn

US projects stalled by locals

blocked or delayed in three months [3]

14%

Americans who want one nearby

a third approve of the building pace [4]

175 km

average distance from a big city

three times further out than the last three years [2]

60 GW

Denmark's connection queue

against a national peak demand of about seven [1]

At a glance

Local opposition blocked or delayed at least 75 US data centre projects worth about $130bn in three months, near the whole of last year's total. [3]
Only 14% of Americans say they would support a data centre in their own community, and just a third approve of the pace of building. [4]
Pennsylvania stripped data centres of fast-track permits on Tuesday, required local approval, and banned state agencies from signing secrecy deals with developers. [4]
Microsoft says it will stop asking communities for tax breaks, while residents in more than a dozen towns try to recall the officials who approved sites. [3][5]
In Europe the block is a waiting list rather than a vote: connecting in the busiest markets can take ten years or more, so 63% of new capacity is going elsewhere. [1]
New European sites will sit more than three times further from big cities than those of the past three years, 175 km out on average, and investors are funding faster fibre to make that distance workable. [2][11]
Where the grid will not take them, projects bring their own power: a 2,900-acre Texas campus anchored by Anthropic runs on its own gas plant, Google has contracted up to 150 megawatts of geothermal, and a nuclear startup plans its first data centre project this year. [9][12][13]
The money has not paused: Skanska took its largest ever order, $1.2bn for four US sites for a client it will not name, and Nvidia is introducing chip buyers to Nordic site owners. [7][10]

Forces in play

Local consent High↑

About 75 US projects worth $130bn were blocked or delayed in three months, and recall petitions are running in more than a dozen towns. Permission is now the scarce input, and money does not make more of it. [3][5]

Connection queues High→

Denmark paused new grid hookups once its waiting list hit 60 gigawatts, nearly nine times the country's peak demand; Amsterdam's wait is about a decade. [1]

Money committed Building↑

Skanska booked its largest ever data centre order, four US buildings for $1.2bn, and nVent is paying $1.75bn for a maker of the power gear these sites need. The spending is ahead of the permits. [7][8]

Places that want it Easing↑

Spain, Finland and Norway are signing gigawatt-scale projects on cheap power, Ireland reopened its grid on strict terms, and Nvidia is brokering introductions in the Nordics. [1][10]

In play Josh Shapiro — Pennsylvania governor; banned fast-track permits and secrecy deals for data centres Microsoft — dropped its tax breaks and secrecy deals after a Michigan town pushed back Oracle — courting Dona Ana County, New Mexico, after locals found out late who was behind the project Independence, Missouri — residents collected 1,200 signatures to recall a councilman over a $150bn site AEMO — Australia's grid operator; puts data centres at 13% of the national market by 2035-36

How it unfolded

March Independence, Missouri votes billions in tax breaks for a $150bn data centre [5]
First quarter About 75 US projects worth $130bn are blocked or delayed by local opposition [3]
June Only 14% of Americans say they would want one in their community [4]
Tuesday Pennsylvania bans fast-track permits and secrecy deals for data centres [4]
Monday Australia's grid operator puts data centres at 13% of the market by 2035-36 [6]

Where this points

Watch whether the companies that dropped their tax breaks get permits faster than the ones still writing cheques; that is the test of whether the money was buying consent or spending it. [3]

Full briefing

Two walls, not one

Local opposition blocked or delayed at least 75 US data centre projects in the first three months of this year, worth about $130bn [3]. It is not a shortage of chips, money or contractors. It is a shortage of permission, and permission has a different shape on each side of the Atlantic.

In Europe the wall is a waiting list. Connecting a new site in the busiest markets can take “10 years or more”, RaboResearch analysts told The Next Web [1]. Denmark’s grid operator paused new connections this year after its queue reached 60 gigawatts, against a national peak demand of about seven [1]. That queue moves the building rather than stopping it: 63% of Europe’s new capacity is now going outside the five established markets [1].

In the United States the wall is people.

The money became the grievance

The industry’s first answer to the backlash was to pay more. In Independence, Missouri, the council voted in March to award billions of dollars in tax breaks to a $150bn project. By June, residents had gathered more than 1,200 signatures to recall one of the councilmen who backed it [5]. The payment was the thing they were angry about.

Some companies have read that. Microsoft said it will stop seeking tax breaks from the communities where it builds [3]. In Lowell Township, Michigan, it dropped both those breaks and its non-disclosure agreements after residents forced a public hearing. Pennsylvania’s governor went further on Tuesday, stripping data centres of fast-track permitting, requiring local approval, and barring state agencies from signing secrecy deals with developers [4].

The companies still paying are meeting organised opposition. In Dona Ana County, New Mexico, Oracle sent mailers, donated to a food pantry and put its name on a dinosaur-dig park [3]. Residents found out who was behind it only after officials approved it.

The squeeze underneath

Nvidia has told big customers that server prices will rise more than 15% next year, as memory chip costs climb [16]. Developers are paying less to use the results: OpenAI cut its top model’s price by more than 20% on Friday [17]. Build costs up, usage prices down. Cheap, quick sites matter more than they did.

Count it twice

Two numbers this week need care. Australia’s grid operator put data centres at 13% of the national electricity market by 2035-36, while about 13 gigawatts of coal retires [6]. Those figures do not subtract: one measures energy over a year, the other capacity at a moment. More than a third of the projects in that pipeline have already been cancelled [6].

The other is emissions. A projection of 24 to 44 million tonnes of CO2 from US AI servers by 2030 keeps being repeated as “24 million cars”. The researchers said 5 to 10 million [15].

Elsewhere: a $966m fine for letting the software decide

The Dutch data protection authority has fined Uber 825 million euros, about $966m, over driver accounts deactivated by automated systems between 2020 and 2022 without proper notice [14]. European law bans decisions made solely by computer where they significantly affect someone’s life. Uber is appealing [14].

02 · Lesson · why it matters

Why paying for a yes is how you lose it

Money makes more of every input to a building except one: the permission of the people who live next to it. Offer money for that, and you have not bought it, you have priced it.

How it works

A build needs land, power, steel and a yes
Money buys more of everything except the yes
So the yes gets a price: tax breaks, funds, donations
Now the neighbours are bargaining, not deciding
A price can always be argued up; a yes cannot
And you cannot put the number back

The twist

Paying for permission does not buy it, it prices it, and the moment a favour has a price, refusing becomes a bargaining position instead of an answer.

Where you've seen this

Nurseries

charging for late pick-ups can make parents later, because lateness stops being a failure and becomes a purchase

Wind farms

a community fund turns neighbours into counterparties, and the next project faces a higher opening bid

Favours between friends

the money ends the favour; you are square now, and the goodwill is spent

Charity collections

printing a suggested amount replaces what people would have decided to give

The catch

The money is not the mistake. Sometimes it is exactly what a place wants. The mistake is offering it first, before anyone has been asked.

Full lesson

The one thing that does not respond to money

A data centre is an enormous shopping list. Steel, switchgear, cooling, fibre, transformers, a few thousand contractors, and a great deal of electricity. Every item on that list behaves the way things behave in a market. Want more of them, pay more, and more appear. When the power gear got tight, a company called nVent simply bought a maker of it for $1.75bn. That is what a supply curve looks like.

There is one line on the list that does not work like that. You also need the town to say yes.

Nobody manufactures a yes. There is no factory for it, no second supplier, no way to import it from a country where it is cheaper. It cannot be stockpiled and it cannot be hedged. And this year it has become the binding item: seventy-five American projects, around $130bn of building, stalled or delayed in three months by people who live nearby.

What happens when you put a number on it

Faced with a shortage, the industry did the thing that has worked on every other shortage. It paid.

Tax breaks. Community funds. Donations to the food pantry. A name on the dinosaur park. And in Independence, Missouri, billions of dollars in breaks voted through in March for a $150bn site, which is exactly what the recall petition was about by June.

Notice the shape of that. The money did not fail to persuade. It changed what was being asked. Before the offer, the question in the council chamber was: do we want this here? After the offer, the question is: what is this worth? Those are not the same question, and only one of them has an answer that can be argued up.

That is the trap. A yes given freely is finished when it is given. A yes that has been bought is never finished, because there is always a higher number. The town that took the deal in Independence did not feel it had decided anything. It felt it had been undersold.

You cannot go back to asking

The second half is worse than the first. Once a number exists, every later conversation happens in its shadow. The next town knows what the last one got. The neighbour who would have shrugged now has a figure to compare against, and shrugging costs them money.

You can withdraw the offer. You cannot withdraw the fact that there was one. Microsoft has said it will stop seeking tax breaks from the communities where it builds, and in one Michigan township it dropped both the breaks and its secrecy agreements. That is a company trying to walk back across a line, and the interesting thing is how much harder that is than never crossing it.

Pennsylvania’s governor went at the same problem from the other side this week. His order strips the projects of fast-track permits and requires local approval, but the part that matters is the ban on state agencies signing secrecy deals with developers. Secrecy is what makes the payment feel like a purchase rather than a bargain. Take it away and the number is on the table for everyone.

Where you are standing in this

It is tempting to file this under corporate clumsiness, and it is not. This is the most ordinary transaction there is, and almost everyone has been on both ends of it.

Someone offers to pay you for the favour you were about to do for nothing, and the favour quietly ends. A charity prints a suggested amount and you stop working out what you would have given. A neighbour offers cash for the inconvenience of their extension, and now you are in a negotiation you never wanted. Saying “I would rather you did not” reads as an opening bid.

None of that requires anyone to be greedy. It only requires the exchange to change category, from something people do to something people sell. That switch happens in one sentence and it does not switch back.

What this costs everyone

Meanwhile the building keeps going, and it goes where the yes is cheap. In Europe the block is not a vote but a queue: ten years to connect in the busiest markets. So 63% of new capacity is heading elsewhere, further from cities than any previous generation of these sites.

That is worth holding loosely, because it cuts in more than one direction. Some of those places genuinely want the investment. Some of them are simply the places with the least ability to say no. From inside any one town it is impossible to tell which one you are, and the number on the table will not tell you.

03 · Lab · your turn

The Price of a Yes

Win four towns over to a data centre, and feel what an early offer of money does to every conversation after it.

04 · Hope · carry this

Something this large is now being made to stand in a school hall and explain itself. Things that have to explain themselves in public usually end up better than things that never had to.