Earlier this year, Natelli Investments, a large-scale development firm, withdrew its annexation and rezoning applications for a proposed data center in Wake County, NC. The campus was projected to be about 190 acres, with six buildings all about 70-feet tall. The developer cited zoning ordinance changes that pushed back the construction of the proposed 250-megawatt facility, but the scrapped plans also followed community protests, petitions, and participation in public meetings over concerns about the data center’s water use, air quality impacts, and increased costs.
“When they make infrastructure improvements, who does that cost go to? It doesn’t go to the developer,” resident Lorraine McAvoy told local media last year. “It goes to the people, the consumers of the utility.”
Stories about cancelled or postponed data center projects are only becoming more commonplace, and new research shows just how pervasive the opposite to AI infrastructure expansion has become.
A report published this month from research firm Data Center Watch found the scale of data center opposition in the first three months of 2026 matches the scale of opposition in all of 2025. At least 75 data center projects worth more than $130 billion have been delayed or cancelled in the first three months of the year. Active opposition groups ballooned from 396 by the end of last year to 833 by the end of March 2026, spanning across 49 states.
