At least 25 data center projects around the country were canceled last year due to opposition from the local communities, according to research from intelligence platform Heatmap Pro.
The canceled projects would have accounted for at least 4.7 gigawatts of electricity demand if they were to go online. For comparison, BloombergNEF analysts forecast that, under the current plans and course of proliferation, data center power demand in the U.S. will hit 106 gigawatts by 2035.
The number might seem small, but it reflects a sharp climb from recent years: there were only six project cancellations in 2024 and two in 2023. Of the 25 data center projects that were canceled in 2025, 21 of those cancellations were in the second half of the year.
A part of that could be explained away by the fact that there are simply way more data center projects being proposed right now. The investment in data centers is so large that it pretty much singlehandedly drove GDP growth in the first half of 2025.
But the researchers claim that the rise in cancellations is reflective of souring sentiment against the data center gold rush and increasing local backlash, basing it on a comprehensive national survey.
The researchers also say that the number of cancellations outpaced other measures of data center growth. For example, the amount of electricity used by data centers nationwide grew by about 22% and is forecast to double or triple over the next 10 years. Meanwhile, cancellations due to local opposition quadrupled over the past year, researchers say.
According to Data Center Map, which is one of the oldest and most comprehensive of the industry databases, there are 3,779 data centers around the United States at the moment, a number that includes centers that are planned, under development, or currently operational. According to Heatmap, 770 of those projects are planned, and at least 99 are being contested by local activists or residents.
As the AI frenzy reached an all-time peak this year, tech companies and the U.S. government have dedicated trillions upon trillions of dollars to an unprecedented data center infrastructure buildout. But as more data centers went online, more communities around the country began feeling the impact.
Data centers run on monstrous energy demands that have a toll on the local power grid and resources. People living in close proximity to data centers have reported water shortages and soaring electricity prices. According to a Bloomberg report from September, people living in areas near data centers saw their electricity bill jump 267% compared to five years before.
Data centers can also have an adverse effect on the health of the local community. A recent study by the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative found that those living within 1 mile of an EPA-regulated data center were breathing air pollution at levels above the national average.
The increasingly negative news about such projects helped make Americans more aware of what happens when a data center comes to town, and could have assisted the rise in local opposition. It’s also not helping the pro-data center buildout case that there is a cost-of-living crisis plaguing the country, and the average citizen is growing more concerned about rising electricity bills.
The report found that water use was the biggest reason for local opposition and was mentioned in more than 40% of the contested projects, followed by energy consumption and higher electricity prices.
Some experts say that the pressure data centers put on the local grid can cause it to exceed load capacity, increasing the risk of winter blackouts in places with a high concentration of data centers. The results could be fatal, like the data center proposal hotspot of Texas, where an estimated 246 people died in a 2021 winter power shortage. Unlike other counties facing a data center-heavy future, Texas has had zero project cancellations due to local opposition this year.
About 40% of data centers that face sustained local opposition are eventually canceled, Heatmap’s review suggests. Peter Freed, Meta’s former director of energy strategy, who spoke to Heatmap, expects only about 10% of the projects that are currently underway to ever be completed.
The opposition is also driving some policy action.
Minnesota passed state laws to limit the energy and water consumption of data centers. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is expected to propose an “Energy NY Development” program that will have data center companies pay more for electricity in her State of the State address on Tuesday night. And in December, a group of more than 250 environmental organizations asked Congress for a moratorium on new data centers.
Surprisingly, though, the report found that most of the project cancellations were in red states like Kentucky and Indiana, specifically red counties that voted for the AI-and-data-center-loving President Trump in the 2024 presidential election.
But the gradually souring conversation around the data center buildout could be tipping the political scales. In the November 2025 elections, a Democrat flipped a reliably Republican seat in the Virginia legislature by running a campaign focusing on the burden of data centers.
Trump might be starting to feel that pressure.
“I never want Americans to pay higher Electricity bills because of Data Centers,” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Monday, adding that his team was working with tech companies like Microsoft to “make major changes beginning this week to ensure that Americans don’t ‘pick up the tab’ for their POWER consumption, in the form of paying higher utility bills.”
Hours later on Tuesday, Microsoft announced a five-point plan to minimize the local impact of its data centers, called “Community-First AI Infrastructure.”
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