By Our Count, 7 Data Center Pushbacks in 10 Days, 5 Nations

By our count, seven actions pushing back against data centres were dated or reported between 31 October and 9 November 2026, in five countries: the United States, the Netherlands, Norway, Australia and the United Kingdom. Four of the seven fall on 9 November.

The newest is in Aurora, Colorado, where Mayor Mike Coffman wants the City Council to reconsider a data center moratorium on Monday, Axios reported on 9 November. Coffman needs seven votes to reopen debate and has six, according to Axios.

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 centres. It teaches the general idea only and does not discuss any place or company in this count.

The Scoreboard

We count a row when a protest, a vote, a public consultation result, an official pause or a call for one, or an operator halt tied to local opposition was dated or first reported in the 10 days to 9 November. The colour marks who acted: residents and voters (teal), officials and grid operators (dark) and a data centre operator (amber). This is our count from our own coverage and Axios’s Aurora report, not a complete census.

What the Count Shows

By our count, three of the seven rows come from residents and voters, three from officials or grid operators and one from an operator. Three of the seven carry a megawatt figure in the sources. In Norway, the 9,100 MW queued and 18,000 MW requested add up to 27,100 MW, by our arithmetic, against national peak consumption that Statnett puts at slightly over 25,000 MW.

Two rows are about power connections rather than planning permission: Statnett’s halt on grid reservations and the suspended power works at NEXTDC’s M3 campus. The other five concern votes, permits, protests or a moratorium.

Aurora Returns to a Pause

Council deadlocked 5–5 on Councilmember Amy Wiles’ proposed six-month moratorium in August, with Coffman casting the deciding vote against it, Axios reported. Axios said Coffman changed his position after touring existing data centers and visiting the proposed Trident site this fall, and that he favours tighter regulations, but not an outright ban.

Coffman told Axios that Trident “demonstrates how inadequate our procedures and regulations are because you have this hyperscale data center coming in next to a residential area”. He also said: “I don’t want to be the data center capital of the United States”. Axios said it contacted the five council members who opposed the moratorium on Friday and none responded.

Connecting the Coverage

Outside the count, the Senate is due to debate a bill on Monday that would require large data center operators to bear more of the cost of grid upgrades. TD Cowen now puts its odds of passage at 25%, as we reported in TD Cowen Cuts Data Center Cost Bill Odds to 25% From 40%. In Utah, the Bureau of Land Management was reviewing a permit for Valar Atomics’ Project Beehive campus, as noted in 380 Appointees Tied to Nvidia; Burgum Has Up to $64M in AI.

On the cost side, a working paper attributes about 4% of the rise in US home power prices to data centers, as we reported in Study: Data Centers Drove 4% of US Home Power Price Rises. The same piece notes a September Siena survey, cited by the Times Union, in which over 60% of New Yorkers oppose a data centre being built near them.

After the vote, states with Democratic governors host 60.3% of US capacity under construction, according to Seoul Economic Daily, covered in Democratic States Now Host 60% of US Data Center Builds.

The Structural Read

As we read the scoreboard, the pushback no longer sits only at the planning stage: two of the seven rows, Statnett’s halt on grid reservations and the suspended power works at NEXTDC’s M3 campus, concern power connections rather than planning permission.

Three Implications

FOR DATA CENTRE BUILDERS By our count, the actions in the 10 days span votes, protests, consultation responses, official pauses and an operator halt, in five countries.

FOR GRID PLANNING In Norway, the 9,100 MW queued and 18,000 MW requested add up to 27,100 MW, by our arithmetic, against peak consumption Statnett puts at slightly over 25,000 MW.

The Business Engineer Lens

This story maps onto the Business Engineer framework The AI Supercycle.

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 decision about land, power or permits, the bottom layer of that stack, made by voters, residents, officials, a grid operator or an operator.

What Is Not Established

The count is ours and is not a census: local actions that our coverage and Axios did not report are not in it. Statnett says its halt is to keep the power system operating safely; it does not describe it as a response to opposition. The Aurora council has not voted, and Hinojosa has not yet taken office. Thurrock Council told Wired that many of the responses came from people outside the local area.

The Bottom Line

By our count, seven data centre pushback actions were dated or reported in the 10 days to 9 November, in five countries, from voters, officials, a grid operator and an operator. The next dated step is Aurora’s council meeting on Monday.