Nvidia says the companies building data centers need to do so in ways that appeal to local communities, Bloomberg reported on 11 November. Josh Parker, Nvidia’s head of sustainability, told a Bloomberg Green panel at COP31 in Turkey that “data centers can be — and should be — an asset to communities”.
Local voters have so far leaned the other way. Of the 47 local data center ballot measures decided in the US this year, 46 went the way that favoured limits, Ballotpedia says. Across all 47, 206,018 of 278,456 votes cast, about 74%, were on the side favouring limits, by our arithmetic from Ballotpedia’s results tables.
Business Pill · Grid Cost Allocation
A short explainer on who pays when the grid has to be extended for a new user. It teaches the general idea only and does not discuss Nvidia or these ballot measures.
The key insight: As we read it, Nvidia’s message and the ballot record point at the same constraint from two sides: Nvidia’s head of sustainability says data centers should be an asset to communities, while about 74% of the 278,456 votes cast on this year’s 47 decided local measures went to the side favouring limits, by our arithmetic from Ballotpedia.
According to the Bloomberg report, Parker said: “There are bad ways to build data centers, but there are many, many good ways to build data centers as well”.
Parker said Nvidia has “been focusing on innovation”, which Bloomberg described as focusing on the “sustainability of data centers, energy efficiency in particular, but also things like water conservation”.
In the US, hyperscalers accounted for at least 75% of corporate clean energy purchases last year, according to Parker. “Those investments are going to pay off”, Parker said.
Luke Nelson, head of international sustainability at JPMorgan Chase, said on the same panel: “The number one enabler that we see is actually the grid”. Bloomberg noted that Turkey has made it a COP31 goal for 35% of global final energy consumption to come from electricity by 2035, against about 23% today, according to a September estimate by the International Energy Agency.
One dot per local data center ballot measure decided in the US in 2026, by date: 46 of the 47 results favoured limits on data center development, by Ballotpedia’s classification. The share of votes, about 74% of 278,456, is our arithmetic from Ballotpedia’s results tables.
What Local Voters Decided
Ballotpedia’s tracker says that as of 4 November, voters had decided 47 of at least 50 local data center measures on 2026 ballots in 13 states. “In 46 cases, a majority favored greater limits on data center development, either by approving restrictions or requirements or by rejecting a measure that would have facilitated or supported development”, it says.
Forty-one of the 47 were decided on 3 November. On that day, Ballotpedia reported, voters approved 27 measures that limited data center development or expressed opposition to it, including five full bans and 12 partial bans, and defeated 13 measures that would have favoured data centers. The one exception was Harwood, North Dakota, where voters rejected a review requirement, 105 votes to 325.
The six earlier votes ran from Canterbury, New Hampshire, on 10 March, where a ban on data centers passed 322 to 63, to Nottingham, New Hampshire, on 8 September, where a 12-month moratorium on permits passed 1,335 to 143. Three more measures are due in December, in Clarksville, Arkansas, and Mandan, North Dakota, according to Ballotpedia.
Adding the yes and no votes Ballotpedia lists for the 47 decided measures gives 278,456 votes. Counting the winning side in the 46 measures where limits prevailed, and the losing yes side in Harwood, 206,018 of them, about 74%, were cast on the side favouring limits, by our arithmetic.
By measures, 46 of 47 is about 98%, and 41 of the 47, about 87%, were decided on a single day, 3 November, by our arithmetic. The vote count gives large towns more weight than the measure count does; neither is a national poll.
As we read the Bloomberg report, Nvidia framed the answer to local pushback as engineering: efficiency, water conservation and clean-energy demand, rather than a program for host towns.
As we read Ballotpedia’s record, the limits came in many forms: full and partial bans, moratoriums, zoning rules and voter-approval requirements, as well as defeats of measures that would have backed projects.
Josh Parker, head of sustainability at Nvidia, at a Bloomberg Green panel at COP31, as reported by Bloomberg, 11 November 2026
“There are bad ways to build data centers, but there are many, many good ways to build data centers as well”
Three Implications
FOR DATA CENTER BUILDERS Ballotpedia lists three more local data center measures for December, two in Clarksville, Arkansas, and one in Mandan, North Dakota.
FOR SUPPLIERS Bloomberg says last week’s tech-stock selloff was fuelled by anticipation that the midterm results will lead to more regulation for AI, including tougher energy and environmental standards for data centers.
FOR THE GRID JPMorgan’s Luke Nelson told the same panel the grid is the number one enabler of electrification goals, according to Bloomberg.
The framework argues: “The structural bottleneck isn’t computing, it’s electrons.”
As we read it, the 2026 ballots add a local layer to that bottleneck: before a site reaches the grid it has to clear the town, and voters favoured limits in 46 of 47 decided measures, Ballotpedia says. The framework predates these votes and does not discuss them.
What Is Not Established
The Bloomberg report we read does not say whether Nvidia plans any program, standard or funding for communities near data centers, and it names no specific project. Bloomberg describes Nvidia as the company that dominates the supply of chips used to train and run AI models; the ballot measures concern the sites where such chips are installed.
Ballotpedia’s results are as posted on its tracker; some 3 November counts may be unofficial. The ballot measures cover only places where a question reached voters, not the wider set of zoning and permit decisions.
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This week’s issue: for two years the AI build-out was priced as a supply story, and last week as a credit story. This week it was priced as a permission story, and the answer arrived as a cost, not a ban.
Nvidia’s head of sustainability says data centers “can be — and should be — an asset to communities”, according to Bloomberg. In 2026’s local ballot measures, voters favoured limits in 46 of 47, and about 74% of the 278,456 votes cast were on that side, by our arithmetic from Ballotpedia.
A note on sourcing. We read the Bloomberg report on the Nvidia remarks in full, as syndicated by Yahoo Finance UK on 11 November 2026, Ballotpedia’s 2026 tracker of data center ballot measures with its results tables, and the Ballotpedia News brief of 6 November. Vote totals and shares are our arithmetic from Ballotpedia’s posted results. We did not contact Nvidia for this piece.
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.
