The AI Data Center Boom Faces a New Reality Check
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“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 conundrumspeculative data center requestspose for U.S.
More than a year later, it’s unclear how much has changed.
Community opposition has emerged as a major barrierto 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More than $170 billionin AI data center capacity has been “blocked, withdrawn, or stalled” by community opposition since January 2024, the energy advisory company Relae, formerly Carbon Direct, said in June.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 theroughly $581 billionGoldman Sachs expects the big tech companies known as hyperscalers to spend in the U.S.
on AI infrastructure, includingdata center construction, this year.
Yet market analysts see no sign that the AI-driven construction boom will disappear anytime soon, despite challenges.
data center power demandmore than doubling from its 2025 levels to reach 66 GW in 2027.
Only about half of data center capacity scheduled for the next one to two years is expected to come online on time amid delays and cancellations, it said.
The Electric Power Research Institute, a research nonprofit, said in February that data centers will represent9% to 17% of U.S.
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