Two interlocking themes dominated the week. First, regulatory pressure on data center development intensified across multiple geographies, with moratoriums enacted or under consideration in Fort Worth, Nashville, Colorado, Alabama, and Louisville, while PJM proposed rules that would force data centers off the grid during emergencies and tighten interconnection standards following a 3.8 GW load drop. Second, community and political resistance widened, with project withdrawals in Pacific, Missouri and Atlanta, an AWS pullback attributed to growing opposition, protests in Salem, and pushback in Lincoln County and Georgia communities that previously welcomed the industry. Running alongside both threads is a power and resource strain story: grid stress in Virginia, Texas, and Pennsylvania, utility supply chain constraints, concerns over water consumption in India and among healthcare AI facilities, and analyses framing AI's volatile power demand as a physical risk to equipment.
Stories covered this period:
- Alabama City Considers Moratorium That Could Kill Edged Data Center Project
- Attorney Argues Saline Township Skipped Steps on Data Center Tax Break
- Global Switch Breaks Ground on Second Madrid Data Center Campus
- South Africa's Eskom Courts Hyperscalers to Absorb Surplus Power Capacity
- Beltline Energy Withdraws Data Center Proposal in Pacific, Missouri
- Crusoe-Backed Heron Power Selects California Site for First Transformer Factory
- PJM Proposes Forcing Data Centers Off Grid During Emergencies
- CoreWeave Moves Into APAC Market With Indonesia Data Center Expansion
- Nebius Leases Data Center Capacity From Vantage in Newport, Wales
- Fort Worth City Council Enacts Temporary Data Center Moratorium