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Data centers

The buildings behind the AI boom: how fast the industry's power use has actually grown, how much more is already being built, and where the friction is.

Last updated September 22, 2026

Operating in the U.S.
5,381
Top state — Virginia
643
2nd — Texas
395
3rd — California
319

Facility count as of March 2024; state totals as of 2025— Data Center Map, via Wikipedia.

Why this isn't a simple building count

Nobody publishes a clean year-by-year count of "how many data centers exist in the U.S." going back decades — counts get recompiled from directories that update continuously, and a single "data center" can mean anything from a closet-sized server room to a several-hundred-acre campus. The number researchers and regulators actually track over time is electricity use, which captures something a raw building count would miss entirely: a 2024 building does vastly more computing per square foot than a 2006 one, because rack density keeps climbing.

Two decades of mostly flat, then a sudden climb

U.S. data center electricity use, 2006–2028
U.S. data center electricity use, 2006 to 2028U.S. data center electricity use, 2006 to 2023, from 61 terawatt-hours in 2006 to 176 in 2023, essentially flat through the mid-2010s before accelerating once AI-accelerated servers entered the installed base around 2017. A projected range for 2028 spans 325 to 580 terawatt-hours, depending on how fast AI hardware deployment continues.0 TWh150 TWh300 TWh450 TWh600 TWh20062014201620182023202861 TWh60 TWh60 TWh76 TWh176 TWh325 (low)580 (high)

Terawatt-hours/year, historical (solid) then a 2028 scenario range (dashed) — LBNL, 2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report; 2006 figure from EPA/Brown et al. 2007.


U.S. data center electricity use barely moved for most of the 2010s — efficiency gains roughly offset rising demand. That changed around 2017, when GPU-accelerated servers built for AI started entering the installed base in volume. By 2023 the industry used about three times what it did a decade earlier, and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab's 2028 scenarios range from roughly triple to more than five times the 2023 figure, depending almost entirely on how fast AI hardware keeps shipping.

What's already being built

Existing vs. under-construction capacity, year-end 2025

Gigawatts of IT capacity, North America — JLL, North America Data Center Report, Year-End 2025.


Existing capacity has nearly been matched by what's already under construction — and 92% of that under-construction capacity is pre-leased or being built by its eventual owner, not speculative. Figures for capacity that's merely "planned" or "proposed," beyond what's already broken ground, vary widely across research firms depending on how loosely "planned" is defined, so this chart sticks to the one comparison — existing vs. under construction — that a single source measures consistently.

Where the friction is

Not every announced project gets built on schedule, or at all. Data Center Watch, which tracks local opposition to proposed sites, found that between May 2024 and March 2025 community opposition blocked six projects and delayed ten more, together worth about $64 billion. Separately, SAVRN's moratorium tracker counted more than 360 local measures restricting new data center development across 43 states as of mid-2026 — other trackers report different totals (one count is closer to 320 across 32 states) depending on whether they count only enacted bans or also proposed ones, but every tracker shows the same thing: New York became the first state to enact a statewide moratorium in July 2026. We don't take a position on whether any specific project or moratorium is the right call — that's a local decision with real arguments on more than one side — but it's part of why "planned" capacity and "built" capacity are two different numbers.

Go into more details

  • Data Center Cooling

    Air, liquid, immersion, evaporative, free, and hybrid cooling — what share of U.S. data centers actually use each one, and why the numbers don't add up to a clean 100% — plainly, with sources.

  • Data Center Water Use

    How much water U.S. data centers actually consume for cooling, why AI workloads specifically are driving the recent jump, and what individual companies have disclosed — plainly, with sources.

  • Closed-Loop Cooling

    How closed-loop data center cooling actually works, how often the water really gets replaced, what Oracle claims about its AI data centers, and why a New Mexico congresswoman's own water-rights figures don't match Oracle's — plainly, with sources.

  • Evaporative Cooling

    How much water evaporative cooling actually uses, what's really behind the claim that data centers raise nearby temperatures by up to 16 degrees, and what the evidence does and doesn't say about a link to extreme weather and flooding, plainly, with sources.

  • Noise Pollution

    How loud data centers actually run, why residents' lawsuits keep hinging on noise standard measuring tools don't detect, and what the research says about the effect on nearby wildlife and ecosystems, plainly, with sources.

  • Data Center Moratorium

    Which senators and representatives support a federal data center moratorium, and which candidates on the November 2026 ballot — for Congress and governor, in both parties — have gone on record for or against one, plainly, with sources.

  • Data Centers and the Clean Air Act

    How xAI's Colossus data center in Memphis ran dozens of unpermitted gas turbines, what the Clean Air Act requires, and where the resulting legal fight stands — plainly, with sources.

  • Air Pollutant Health Effects

    What EPA and ATSDR have found about how nitrogen oxides and formaldehyde — both released by gas turbines — affect the human body, plainly, with sources.

Nonpartisan, plainly

We don't take a position on whether the country should be building this much data center capacity, how it should be powered, or how local governments should weigh the tradeoffs — those are real disagreements with legitimate arguments on more than one side, and it's not this page's job to settle them. These are the sourced numbers, plainly.

See something wrong at a data center near you?

Noise, unpermitted construction, water or air complaints, or anything else worth documenting — Erin Brockovich's team runs a crowdsourced tracker where residents can report data center issues directly.

Report a data center issue ↗

Talking points

These are the questions we think you should ask those who are running for office and will represent you. We don't give our opinion on the answer, but we DO think you should be talking about them.

  1. Should local communities get a binding vote on new data center permits, not just a public comment period?
  2. Should a data center be required to disclose its expected electricity and water use before a permit is approved?
  3. Should states offering data center tax incentives publish the total cost of those incentives against the jobs actually created?

Read more

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