Efforts to curb data center speculation are gaining ground across the United States
Across the United States, measures such as large-load electricity pricing are being used to screen out speculative data center projects in response to public opposition and state-level policy changes. Relae says that since January 2024, more than $170 billion in AI data center capacity has been "blocked, withdrawn, or stalled" due to community opposition, while Goldman Sachs expects hyperscalers to spend about $581 billion on U.S. AI infrastructure this year. Market analysts believe that despite the challenges, the AI-driven construction boom will not disappear in the short term.
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Large-load tariffs and other measures to weed out speculative projects are taking shape amid public backlash to data centers and shifting state-level policies.
September 25, 2026
“A fraction of proposed data centers will get built. Utilities are wising up.”
That was the headline on a May 2025 Utility Dive article that explored the conundrum speculative data center requests pose for U.S. electric utilities. More than a year later, it’s unclear how much has changed.
Community opposition has emerged as a major barrier to data center development, with other challenges including construction labor shortages, long lead times for critical electrical equipment, limited power availability in key markets and uncertainty around consumer demand for artificial intelligence tools.
More than $170 billion in AI data center capacity has been “blocked, withdrawn, or stalled” by community opposition since January 2024, the energy advisory company Relae, formerly Carbon Direct, said in June.
That’s a sizable chunk of the roughly $581 billion Goldman Sachs expects the big tech companies known as hyperscalers to spend in the U.S. on AI infrastructure, including data center construction, this year.
Yet market analysts see no sign that the AI-driven construction boom will disappear anytime soon, despite challenges.
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