By our count of our own coverage, local fights touched $17 billion of US data center plans in the first 11 days of November. A $10 billion plan in Delhi Township, Michigan, was withdrawn on 9 November. A $5 billion campus at the former Landover Mall in Maryland sits under a county permit hold to 31 December. Amazon Web Services had planned a $2 billion campus in Sunbury, Ohio, where voters on 3 November approved a charter amendment barring data centers above 25 megawatts.
Where the sources give power figures, the Michigan and Maryland plans add up to 1,520 megawatts, by our arithmetic. One plan moved the other way: a $550 million data center at a former paper mill in Jay, Maine, was revived with two permit applications on 9 November.
Business Pill · Grid Cost Allocation
An evergreen Business Engineer explainer on who pays when new grid capacity is built for large loads such as data centers. It teaches the general idea only and does not discuss any place or company in this count.
The key insight: By our count, local fights in the first 11 days of November touched $17 billion of US data center plans where the sources give a dollar size: $10 billion withdrawn in Michigan, $5 billion under a permit hold in Maryland and AWS’s $2 billion Sunbury plan, where voters approved a 25-megawatt cap. A $550 million plan in Maine was revived, about one thirty-first of that total.
We count a place when one of our pieces published since 1 November reports a withdrawal, a permit hold, a vote, a moratorium, a consultation result or a revival affecting data center plans there, dated or reported between 1 and 11 November 2026. Some rows are a single project; the two moratoriums cover a whole city. We re-checked each row against the source our piece cited. Dollar and megawatt figures appear only where that source gives them. This is our count, not a complete census.
Withdrawn · Delhi Township, Michigan · 9 Nov
Lighthouse Sustainability informed the Lansing Economic Area Partnership that it is “withdrawing its interest in the site”, LEAP said. The plan was a $10 billion data center on 423 acres.
Permit hold · Landover, Prince George’s County, Maryland · to 31 Dec
Executive Order 17-2026 extends a hold on permit applications for Qualified Data Centers to 31 December 2026, unless changed by further order. NPR reported on 7 November that a community effort had blocked the campus planned for the former Landover Mall site.
Size in the source: $5 billion (NPR); 820 megawatts (The Washington Post) · Source: county order, NPR; our Maryland piece
Voters limited · Sunbury, Ohio · 3 Nov
A charter amendment barring data centers above 25 megawatts passed by 2,809 votes to 763 on the unofficial canvass. AWS had planned a $2 billion campus in the city, DatacenterDynamics reported in 2024. An Amazon spokesperson told 10TV: “We are disappointed with the result”.
Through four separate referendums, around 80% of voters rejected rezoning for parcels of land to accommodate a data center project, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported.
Almost 82% of voters voted to reverse the village council’s agreement with EdgeConneX to build two data centers, the Enquirer reported. NBC4 reported on 9 November that construction is underway on the two data centers despite the vote.
Size in the source: not given for the data centers; NBC4 says an 800 MW power plant for them is pending · Source: Enquirer, NBC4; our Ohio vote coverage
Moratorium · Fairfield, California · 10 Nov
The City Council unanimously placed a 45-day moratorium on a type of project that does not yet exist in the city, the Daily Republic reported. The paper said the 300-acre Planning Area 6 site had most of the focus after the city tested NorthPoint Development’s interest.
The City Council voted unanimously to impose a 180-day moratorium on data center proposals, WDIV reported. Mayor Robert McCraight said the city has no data centers and has not received any proposals.
Size in the source: first drafted for facilities of at least one gigawatt, then widened to all data centers · Source: WDIV; our Michigan piece (update)
Awaiting a decision · Thurrock, Essex, United Kingdom · reported 9 Nov
Of the 1,000 responses submitted by members of the public on Google’s data center campus plan, only one supported the project, Wired reported. Thurrock Council told Wired it expects to rule on the initial application early next year.
Stockland and John Boyd Properties withdrew their plans for the AI data centre in an estimated $3.5 billion (Australian) logistics precinct on the Cooks River, ABC News reported.
Size in the source: not given for the data centre alone · Source: ABC News; our Sydney piece
Revived · Jay, Maine · 9 Nov
JGT2 Redevelopment filed two permit applications with the Maine Department of Environmental Protection to turn the former Androscoggin paper mill into a data center, the Bangor Daily News reported. The plan first made public in March was a $550 million data center.
Our count of ten places where a withdrawal, permit hold, vote, moratorium, consultation result or revival was dated or reported from 1 to 11 November 2026, by outcome. Dot area shows the dollar size where the cited source gives one; the $17 billion total is our arithmetic. Not a complete census.
What the Numbers Add Up To
By our count, the ten rows split into two withdrawals, one permit hold, three votes, two moratoriums, one site awaiting a decision and one revival. Eight of the ten are in the United States, across five states: Ohio has three, Michigan two, and Maryland, California and Maine one each. The other two are in the United Kingdom and Australia.
Only four of the ten rows carry a dollar figure for the data center itself. The three on the US pushback side come to $17 billion, by our arithmetic: $10 billion in Michigan, $5 billion in Maryland and $2 billion in Ohio. That is about 31 times the $550 million plan revived in Maine. The 1,520 megawatts for Michigan and Maryland compare with the 82-megawatt power contract the Maine developer cites, about 18.5 times as much.
The outcomes differ in what they settle. The Sunbury amendment draws its line at 25 megawatts; the sources we read do not give a megawatt figure for the AWSplan, and Amazon’s statement does not say what it plans for the site. In Fairfield and Romulus, the moratoriums came before any formal application.
Where the Votes Have Not Been the Last Word
In Ashville, voters overturned the village’s Development and Supply Agreement with EdgeConneX, and construction continued, NBC4 reported. The station said an 800 MW power plant for the data centers is pending before the Ohio Power Siting Board, which has until 20 November to decide. EdgeConneX had not responded to NBC4’s request for comment.
In Maryland, the county order “shall terminate on December 31, 2026, unless changed by further Executive Order”. In Thurrock, the council told Wired it expects to rule early next year, and in Maine the Bangor Daily News said JGT2’s plan had been on hold before the new filings.
As we read the count, the outcomes run on different clocks: a withdrawal ends a plan, a permit hold has a date, a vote can leave construction under way, as NBC4 reported in Ashville, and a moratorium can come before any application, as in Fairfield and Romulus.
Amazon spokesperson, statement to 10TV, 4 November 2026
“We are disappointed with the result, but we have appreciated the opportunity to engage with the community on the benefits that this potential investment could bring to Sunbury”
Three Implications
FOR DATA CENTER DEVELOPERS By our count, ten places in 11 days produced two withdrawals, one permit hold, three votes, two moratoriums, one pending decision and one revival.
FOR POWER PLANNING The Michigan and Maryland plans add up to 1,520 megawatts, by our arithmetic, about 18.5 times the 82-megawatt contract the Maine developer cites.
The framework says: “Each layer is constrained by the one below it.” It describes Layer 1, Energy & Physical, as “Gigawatts, transmission, cooling, land, water, rare-earth magnets. The bedrock everything else stands on.”
As we read it, each row in our count is a local decision about land, permits or power at that bottom layer, and the $17 billion is the part of it that carries a price tag in the sources.
What Is Not Established
The count is ours and is not a census: local actions our coverage did not report are not in it. The dollar figures come from different sources and dates, from LEAP’s 9 November release to DatacenterDynamics’ 2024 report on AWS, and are not like-for-like. The Sunbury results are unofficial until certified. The sources we read do not say whether the Sunbury, Wilmington or Landover projects will proceed in another form, and the Maryland hold predates November.
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By our count, local fights in the first 11 days of November touched $17 billion and 1,520 megawatts of US data center plans where the sources give a size: one withdrawn, one on hold and one facing a voter-approved cap. One $550 million plan, in Maine, came back.
A note on sourcing. The count is ours, built from FourWeekMBA pieces published since 1 November 2026; on 11 November we re-read the source each piece cited (LEAP, Lansing City Pulse, Prince George’s County Executive Order 17-2026, NPR, The Washington Post via The Daily Record, the Delaware County canvass, DatacenterDynamics, 10TV, the Cincinnati Enquirer, NBC4, the Daily Republic, WDIV, Wired, ABC News and the Bangor Daily News via The Maine Monitor) and Google’s blog.
Totals, ratios and groupings are our arithmetic. It is not a complete census. We did not contact the developers, councils or companies named.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
