Over the past year, a strange pattern has repeated itself in town halls and county offices across the world: a company shows up with plans for a large computing facility, often called a data center, promising jobs and investment — and local residents show up too, in far greater numbers, to say no. In many cases, they win. This is not a small trend. Research groups tracking these disputes say that in just the first three months of 2026, dozens of proposed data center projects worth well over $100 billion were delayed or cancelled after local pushback in the United States alone — matching the total for all of 2025 in a single quarter. Similar fights are playing out in Europe, Latin America, and Asia-Pacific. Surveys now show that most people, when asked directly, do not want one of these facilities built near their home. So what is actually going on, and why does it matter beyond the town where it happens? What a data center actually is, in plain terms A data center is essentially a ...
Over the past year, a strange pattern has repeated itself in town halls and county offices across the world: a company shows up with plans for a large computing facility, often called a data center, promising jobs and investment — and local residents show up too, in far greater numbers, to say no. In many cases, they win. This is not a small trend. Research groups tracking these disputes say that in just the first three months of 2026, dozens of proposed data center projects worth well over $100 billion were delayed or cancelled after local pushback in the United States alone — matching the total for all of 2025 in a single quarter. Similar fights are playing out in Europe, Latin America, and Asia-Pacific. Surveys now show that most people, when asked directly, do not want one of these facilities built near their home. So what is actually going on, and why does it matter beyond the town where it happens? What a data center actually is, in plain terms A data center is essentially a ...