47 Stalled Projects and a Microsoft Exit: AI’s Local Limits

At least 47 large US data-centre projects were delayed, withdrawn or blocked in 2026, the Financial Times reported on 18 October, citing data shared by RegLayer, a regulatory-intelligence company. In England, Microsoft pulled out of its agreement as anchor tenant at Nscale’s Loughton site, where grid bosses do not expect a power supply until the 2030s, according to the Telegraph, as Bloomberg and Reuters reported on 18 October.

This piece sets those reports next to Pew Research Center’s survey numbers and WIRED’s account of the industry’s school outreach, and lists, in one table, the places where local approvals or local power supply have already held a data centre back.

Business Pill · GRID COST ALLOCATION

A one-minute explainer of grid cost allocation: who pays for a new power line. It teaches the general idea only and says nothing about any company or place in this story.

What the Polls Show

More than half of Americans (54%) say data centers are mostly bad for the environment, up from 39% in January, according to a Pew Research Center survey of 10,548 U.S. adults conducted from July 20 to Aug. 9, 2026. Half say they are mostly bad for home energy costs, up from 38%, and 49% say they are mostly bad for people’s quality of life nearby, up from 30%.

Pew also found that 60% of Americans would be not too or not at all comfortable with a new data center operating in their area, while 19% would be somewhat comfortable and 7% extremely or very comfortable. Just over half of Republicans (54%) and about two-thirds of Democrats (68%) said they would be uncomfortable, Pew reported.

On our arithmetic, the share saying data centers are mostly bad for quality of life nearby rose 19 percentage points between Pew’s two surveys, and the share saying they are mostly bad for the environment rose 15 points.

What Was Posted on X

Techmeme’s 19 October summary of WIRED’s report: at least 11 firms and groups have hosted student field trips since 2025, with flag kits and cards for first graders. It is the industry-outreach half of this piece; the table shows what that outreach is up against.

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie’s 16 October post saying he had signed the city’s data center moratorium legislation, with a 45-day push to build a framework that keeps electricity rates low and protects water and air. It is the approval-side case in our table, in the city most associated with the AI industry.

James Titcomb, who broke the story for the Telegraph, posting on 18 October that Microsoft cancelled its UK data centre deal with Nscale, which he says comes as Nscale hopes for a $35 billion IPO (his figure). It is the power-side case: per the Telegraph, grid bosses do not expect a supply at Loughton until the 2030s.

CNBC’s 19 October post on its report about Google’s proposed Pine Island, Minnesota data center: Google says it can build data centers the right way, and some experts and residents are skeptical. It is the who-pays-for-power case in this piece’s 19 October Pine Island update.

How the Industry Is Courting Communities

WIRED reported on 18 October that its tally of public blogs and social media posts found that, since 2025, at least eleven companies and industry groups have hosted student field trips to local data centers. Its weekly column describes data centers as this midterm season’s biggest issue.

In May, according to WIRED, the Potomac chapter of AFCOM, a data-centre trade group, sponsored Memorial Day-themed flag-making kits for 3,100 first graders across 37 schools in Loudoun County, Virginia, with an informational card about “the positive impact” the industry has on the local economy.

Alex Molnar, director of the National Education Policy Center, told WIRED that industries with an image problem have long brought their messaging to schools. WIRED described the outreach as part of how industries maintain their “social license to operate” in a community.

Where Local Limits Have Already Hit

The table below collects cases from our recent reporting in which a local approval or a local power supply held up a data centre, each with its own source.

The Money Tied to It

BlackRock chief executive Larry Fink told CNBC on 14 October that “if we have a moratorium of some sort in this country, we will be in a recession.” CNBC noted that local opposition to data centers has become a key issue in the 3 November midterm elections, and cited analyst estimates that AI capital expenditure could climb above $1 trillion in 2027 and exceed $5 trillion in total by 2030.

The FT wrote, in its post on its 18 October story, that “cracks are appearing in America’s debt-laden $10tn AI infrastructure boom as project delays, public backlash and shaky investor confidence bring a reckoning for the data centre build-out underpinning the US economy.” Bernstein analysts estimated this month that only about 35% of the planned US data-centre pipeline is credible, per the FT’s Chinese edition.

Our Count

Of the five specific places in the table, three are approval decisions (New York, San Francisco and Rockdale County) and two are power-supply delays (Loughton and NextDC’s M3). That split is our own count of the cases we have reported, not a sample of the industry, and the 47-project figure is RegLayer’s, as the FT reported it.

The Structural Reading

As we read it, the two kinds of case in the table act on the same thing: the date a site can start earning. An approval pause stops a project before it is built; a power delay can also hold up a site that is already partly running, as at M3, which Bloomberg describes as partially operable, with some 42 megawatts brought online during the 2026 financial year.

As we read it, the Pew numbers and WIRED’s reporting describe the setting these decisions are made in. None of the sources links the survey to any single project, and this piece does not claim one cause for the cases in the table.

Update, 19 October: Loudoun’s Data-Center Pause Returns to the Board Tuesday

Loudoun County, Virginia, is due to receive the formal resolution on its data-center pause on Tuesday, 20 October. According to the Board of Supervisors’ own action report for its 15 September business meeting, the board “requested staff return to the October 20, 2026, Board Business Meeting with the resolution to pause consideration of legislative applications for data centers and substations.”

The motion that passed on 15 September, 7-1-0-1, directed staff to prepare a resolution pausing the board’s consideration of those applications “for a period not to exceed 12 months from the date on which the application was first submitted to the Planning Commission,” so that the board can apply Phase 2 of its Data Centers Standards and Locations zoning and comprehensive-plan amendments to them. It said: “The resolution shall be effective September 15, 2026, and the pause shall not cause an application to become inactive.” A second motion, also passed 7-1-0-1, lets the board take up an application during the pause if it “involves a grid reliability substation or if the statutory period is about to expire.”

The same meeting denied a new direct-connect substation application, Tech Park at Dulles, with a finding that “the electrical grid in Loudoun County is severely strained due to increased electrical demand and constraints on delivering sufficient power to the County.” Data Center Dynamics reported that a permanent ban was deemed unworkable under Virginia law.

As we read it, this is the two local gates from this piece in one county: a pause on approvals to build, and a board finding about the power to run. We will update this section after Tuesday’s meeting.

Update, 19 October: Google’s Minnesota Campus Tests the ‘Right Way’ Pitch

CNBC reported on 19 October on Google’s proposed 780-megawatt data center in Pine Island, Minnesota, a town of about 4,000 residents. According to CNBC, Google plans to finance 1,400 megawatts of wind, 200 megawatts of solar and 300 megawatts of battery storage on Xcel Energy’s grid; under the proposed agreement, Google would pay for at least 75% of its contracted capacity even if it uses less, and would owe up to eight years of minimum demand charges if it ended the agreement early. CNBC reports that the agreement is pending approval by the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission.

Amanda Peterson Corio, Google’s global head of energy and power, told CNBC: “It’s right at the time when we needed capital to fix aging infrastructure in the United States.” Xcel’s chief customer officer, Amanda Rome, said of the agreement’s protections: “Nobody wants to have a big buildout and then have nowhere for that power to go and nobody to pay for that power.” Not everyone CNBC spoke to agreed with the model. Jigar Shah, a partner at Multiplier, argued for fitting data centers into spare grid capacity: “If you fit the load growth that the data centers want into the existing grid, everybody’s rates go down by a lot,” though he also called the Google and Xcel project a good example of a data center acting as a catalyst for newer technology. David Pomerantz of the Energy and Policy Institute said utilities earn returns on new builds “typically around 10%.”

The state’s ratepayer advocate has gone further. In a 1 October press release, the Office of Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said it had filed initial comments with the commission arguing that Xcel “has not established that the Google ESA is reasonable, consistent with the public interest, or meets the stringent requirements of the applicable law.” The office said: “Although Xcel claims that Google will provide over $1.1 billion in net benefits to other ratepayers, the Attorney General’s Office’s analysis indicates that the value may be closer to $1 billion in net costs to other ratepayers.” It also said Xcel “has redacted almost all of the dollar amounts of these potential impacts.”

As we read it, Pine Island is the second gate in this piece, who pays for the power, being argued before a state utility commission rather than a county board. The commission has not ruled.

The Structural Read

As we read it, the approval cases in the table are spreading: New York’s order dates from July, and San Francisco’s moratorium and Rockdale County’s denial of Project Rockforge both came this month.

As we read it, the power cases show up in earnings forecasts: Citigroup analysts, as Bloomberg reported, said the M3 delay could reduce NextDC’s fiscal 2027 operating earnings by as much as A$25 million.

As we read it, Pew’s figures and WIRED’s reporting show how the industry and the public now see each other; the sources do not tie either to a particular decision.

Three Implications

DEVELOPERS Rockdale County denied all four applications for Project Rockforge, a planned 504 MW campus, according to RegLayer’s public map, and New York’s order pauses state permitting for projects not yet approved.

TENANTS AND THEIR LANDLORDS The Telegraph reported that Microsoft pulled out of Nscale’s Loughton site, where grid bosses do not expect a power supply until the 2030s.

INVESTORS NextDC halted its shares over the M3 power delay; Citigroup analysts put up to A$25 million of fiscal 2027 operating earnings at risk, Bloomberg reported.

The Business Engineer Lens

This story maps onto the Business Engineer framework The State of AI Data Centers.

The framework puts it this way: “The structural bottleneck isn’t computing, it’s electrons.”

As we read it, two cases in the table fit that description on the reported facts: the Telegraph says grid bosses do not expect a power supply at Loughton until the 2030s, and NextDC halted its shares over a power-supply delay at M3. The approval cases sit outside it. The framework was published in December 2025 and does not discuss these places.

What Is Not Established

Pew measures attitudes, not decisions. WIRED’s tally of field trips is drawn from public blogs and social media posts. The 47-project figure is RegLayer’s as reported by the FT; we could not read the full FT article, and the “conservative estimate” wording comes from the summary in the FT’s Chinese edition. The reports do not say why Microsoft withdrew from Loughton, and the link between NextDC’s delay and Jemena is Citigroup’s analysis as Bloomberg reported it.

The Bottom Line

The Financial Times reported that at least 47 large US data-centre projects were delayed, withdrawn or blocked in 2026, citing RegLayer data, and the Telegraph reported that Microsoft pulled out of Nscale’s Loughton site, where power is not expected until the 2030s. Pew found 60% of Americans would be uncomfortable with a new data center nearby, and WIRED counted at least eleven companies and groups hosting student field trips since 2025.