Data Center Watch Q1 2026 report $130B blocked/delayed 3 months matches all 2025 / 75+ projects across 49 states / 833 active opposition groups 2.1x from 396 Dec 2025 / 69+ local government bans by May 2026 / 70% Americans oppose nearby DC up from ~50% late 2025 20pp shift 6 months / Seattle 1-year pause 5 projects / WFYI Jul 6 Indiana investigation / 11 counties ordinances / 17+ counties moratoriums / Marshall + Cass permanent bans / ~1/3 of 92 IN counties restrict / state vs local direction divergence IN PA WI

Plain-English framing of why these two data drops together are the story of the last week. Individual moratorium votes and lawsuits are anecdotes; the macro numbers tell you whether the anecdotes are a scattered pattern or a directional trend. Both data drops this week point to directional: opposition scales are increasing on every measurable axis over 6-9 months. Data Center Watch Q1 2026 report (published in late June and re-referenced in reporting this week). Data Center Watch is a research project tracking US data center project outcomes, funded by opposition-adjacent organizations but with methodology reviewed as reasonable by NBC News and other mainstream outlets. Their Q1 2026 report shows: • **$130 billion in project value blocked or delayed** between January 1 and March 31, 2026. For scale: that matches the total value of blocked/delayed projects for all of 2025 (~$130B) in just three months. Same rate = 4x annual pace. • **75+ discrete US data center projects** blocked or delayed in Q1 2026. Coverage across 49 states — literally everywhere except one. • **833 active opposition groups** as of March 2026, up from 396 at the end of 2025. That is 2.1x growth in three months. Groups range from ad-hoc neighborhood associations to well-organized regional coalitions with staff. • **69+ local government units have enacted formal bans** as of May 2026 (this is a subset of the moratorium count — 'bans' means permanent or effectively permanent, not temporary moratoriums). • **Public opinion**: 70% of Americans now say they would oppose a new data center near their neighborhood, per Ipsos polling. This is up from roughly 50% in late 2025 — a 20-percentage-point shift in 6 months. Data center approval / opposition tracking has not been a routinely polled question historically, so 6 months of clear directional movement is meaningful. • **Notable specific city / state actions in the report**: Seattle passed a 1-year pause affecting 5 proposed projects (Seattle is the biggest single city to enact a pause, and it's the home city of Microsoft and Amazon — that framing choice is deliberate). WFYI-Indianapolis investigation published Monday July 6. WFYI is Indianapolis's NPR affiliate; their investigative team partnered with Indiana University's Environmental Resilience Institute to catalog Indiana counties' data center regulatory status. Findings: • **11 counties with data center-specific zoning ordinances** (regulate but don't ban). • **17+ counties with temporary moratoriums** (typically 12-18 month freezes). • **2 counties with permanent bans**: Marshall County (northwest IN, ~46k residents, first county in state to ban) and Cass County (north-central IN, ~37k residents). • **Roughly 1/3 of Indiana's 92 counties** have adopted some form of restriction — a comprehensive statewide pattern despite the state government's data-center-friendly stance (Governor Braun and the state Chamber of Commerce have actively courted Meta's $10B Lebanon campus and other capex). The interesting divergence: state policy in Indiana is one direction (welcoming), local policy is the opposite direction (restricting). This is the same pattern showing up in Pennsylvania (Gov Shapiro's 'Fast Track' program includes Project Hazelnut; Hazle Township passed a 180-day moratorium against it) and to some degree in Wisconsin (state welcomes Microsoft Fairwater; residents sue Microsoft over Fairwater operations). What this means analytically. The 6-month sentiment shift and the 3-month project-blocking rate both indicate that opposition activity is scaling faster than institutional capacity to absorb it. Grassroots opposition groups are not a fixed cost of siting anymore — the number of groups is growing exponentially and each new group is a discrete failure-mode risk. Cliff's regulatory-risk models should now include a 'grassroots opposition density' variable per site: presence of any known opposition group within X miles adds Y% to project-blocking probability. That variable was near-zero in 2023-2024; it's a top-3 variable in Q3 2026.

Primary source · Data Center Watch — Q1 2026 Report + NBC News — Data center opponents have blocked or delayed projects worth nearly $130 billion in 2026 study finds + Tom's Hardware — More than 75 data center build-outs worth $130 billion have been successfully blocked in Q1 2026 + MLQ News — 75+ US Data Center Projects Worth $130B Blocked in Q1 2026 + WFYI — Nearly a third of Indiana counties have moved to restrict data centers + Indiana Citizen — WFYI Nearly a third of Indiana counties have moved to restrict data centers + Data Center Bans — Indiana ↗