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New York Digital Investment Group and its affiliate North Country Collocation Services want to build a 1.5 million-square-foot, 635-megawatt data center on the former Alcoa East/Reynolds industrial site near the St. Lawrence River in Massena, a project that would draw roughly 70% of the output from the nearby Moses Saunders hydroelectric dam. Gov. Kathy Hochul's executive order restricts new hyperscale data centers exceeding 50 megawatts by barring the DEC from issuing new discretionary permits, but NCCS argues it applied for all necessary permits back in 2020 and requires no additional state approvals. Massena's Town Board voted 3-2 against a local moratorium, though the project still faces a SEQRA review and DEC environmental assessment. The St. Regis Mohawk Tribe formally opposed the project, while some Massena residents support it based on the company's promise of 200 full-time jobs, roughly 2,000 construction jobs, and millions in community investments.

Maryland, South Dakota, Alabama, Minnesota, Texas, Virginia, and Nebraska have each enacted distinct measures requiring data centers to bear more of the grid infrastructure costs their facilities create, rather than passing those costs to residential and business ratepayers. Alabama's law, effective October 1, 2026, covers data centers with electricity demands of at least 150 megawatts; Minnesota imposes annual fees ranging from $2 million for facilities drawing 100 to 250 megawatts up to $5 million for those requiring at least 750 megawatts. Maryland's framework, established under an executive order signed by Gov. Wes Moore in September 2026, requires state review of projects needing at least 25 megawatts and mandates a public dashboard disclosing electricity demand and water use. Virginia's State Corporation Commission issued an order in August requiring data centers to pay for dedicated transmission infrastructure following a request from Gov. Abigail Spanberger's administration.

Memphis City Council voted 7-5 to postpone a decision on a proposed 12-month moratorium on new data center projects, triggering protests inside City Hall, a police clearing of the chamber, and a fight between two women in the lobby. The next vote is scheduled for October 20, according to the report; no one was detained or injured in the lobby altercation, a Memphis Police Department spokesperson said. Councilman J.B. Smiley Jr., the moratorium's lead sponsor, pushed for an immediate vote, while Councilman Jeff Warren warned that a pause could drive companies to neighboring DeSoto, Crittenden, Fayette, or Tipton counties. Elon Musk's SpaceXAI operates its Colossus supercomputer facilities in the Memphis area, and Mayor Paul Young has called for new rules on water and electricity use, air quality, noise, and siting while noting the tax revenue data centers generate.

Technology companies and utilities are expanding demand response programs at AI data centers, allowing facilities to temporarily reduce or shift electricity use during periods of grid stress. The Electric Power Research Institute projects U.S. data center electricity consumption could rise from 177 to 192 terawatt-hours in 2024 to between 383 and 793 terawatt-hours by 2030, and EPRI technical leader Arin Kaye said surveyed facilities reported peak power reduction potential of 10% to 30%, with some hyperscalers going higher. A Duke University Nicholas Institute study estimated that greater data center flexibility could avoid $40 billion to $150 billion in capital investments over the next decade. OpenAI recently agreed to cut electricity draws by up to 1 gigawatt from a planned 3.2-gigawatt Georgia facility during grid stress events, and Alphabet's Google, NVIDIA, and Emerald AI launched the AI Energy Management Alliance to advance flexible data center deployment.

During the first three months of 2026, data center opponents stopped or delayed 75 projects worth almost $130 billion, roughly equal to those blocked in all of 2025, according to figures cited at an industry panel convened by Data Center Frontier in Northern Virginia in early August. A Gallup survey conducted in March found that 71% of Americans would oppose a new AI data center in their area, a statistic industry executives described as their biggest barrier to growth. In response, a growing number of PR consultants are marketing specialized services including community outreach, landowner recruitment, and preemptive relationship-building before opposition groups can form. David McCall, described as a brand evangelist at QTS Data Centers, told the panel that community opposition is a card that can stop every project: 'It can stop and will stop everything.'

French AI and supercomputing infrastructure company Sesterce has announced plans for a $10 billion AI data center campus in Jämsä, Finland, to be built on the site of the former Kaipola paper mill. Construction begins this year, with the first phase delivering 200MW and a second phase expanding capacity to 600MW; the company's long-term target for Finland exceeds 1GW. Sesterce has committed to enabling one megawatt of new renewable generation on the Finnish grid for every megawatt the campus consumes within 10 years of becoming operational, and will establish a $10 million community fund for local projects in Jämsä. The company says an anchor customer has already been secured for the site.

Residents near Auchtertool in Fife, Scotland, are opposing ILI Group's plans for the 600MW Cato data center, which would be built on land containing the ruins of Hallyards Castle, believed to have been inhabited during the reign of King Malcolm Canmore some 1,000 years ago. Historic Environment Scotland declined to grant the castle protected monument status, citing the planning process already being underway; community representative Liam Stewart said the community does not consent to the project. ILI Group submitted plans in June for the 25-hectare development, projecting around £5 billion ($6.71 billion) in investment delivered in phases, with up to seven buildings and an on-site substation. ILI said it would follow Fife Council heritage officers' recommendations and that the stonework would be dismantled, recorded by archaeologists, and reused on site in a publicly accessible setting.

Utilities, grid operators, and technology companies across the United States are expanding efforts to make data centers more flexible in when they consume electricity, a strategy known as demand response. A Duke University Nicholas Institute study estimated that greater data center flexibility could save between $40 billion and $150 billion in grid capital investments over the next decade. The Electric Power Research Institute projects US data center electricity use could rise from 177 to 192 terawatt-hours in 2024 to between 383 and 793 TWh by 2030, while EPRI's Arin Kaye noted surveyed data centers reported peak power reduction potential of 10% to 30%, with some hyperscalers going higher. OpenAI recently agreed to cut electricity draws by up to 1 gigawatt from a planned 3.2-gigawatt Georgia facility during grid stress events, and Alphabet's Google, NVIDIA, and Emerald AI launched the AI Energy Management Alliance last month to advance flexible data center deployment.

The Data Center Digest has refreshed its interactive Data Center Map, adding six markets and updating the regulatory status of several existing ones. The map now covers 41 markets, up from 35.

The new markets reflect projects that have moved into the news in recent weeks. In the Texas Panhandle, Crusoe's Goodnight campus east of Amarillo is under construction with Google as the end user and about $29 billion of investment expected. In southern New Mexico, Oracle and OpenAI's 2.45 GW Project Jupiter campus is facing pipeline delays, and Oracle sent a force majeure notice to its developer on Sept. 24. The map also adds the Quantum Frederick park in Frederick, Md., where Amazon is building four data centers; Vantage's $15 billion-plus Lighthouse campus in Port Washington, Wis.; Aligned's 2 GW Project Phoenix campus in Shippingport, Pa., which broke ground Sept. 10; and the Stratos project in Box Elder County, Utah, which has drawn organized opposition.

Several existing entries changed as policy moved. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott directed state regulators on Sept. 21 to halt all data center permits until audits of the state grid and water board are complete, and the map's Dallas-Fort Worth, West Texas, and San Antonio entries now reflect that pause. In Chicago, the mayor proposed a 12-month moratorium ordinance on Sept. 23 that is before a City Council committee. Charlotte's City Council has set an Oct. 12 public hearing on extending its moratorium, which expires Nov. 5. Loudoun County, Va., is scheduled to vote Oct. 20 on a resolution pausing legislative data center applications for up to 12 months, and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has until Dec. 31 to act on the Responsible Data Center Development Act. The Homer City, Pa., entry now includes Amazon Web Services' filing for a 36-building, 1,100-acre campus.

The map's legislation layer continues to update automatically from the Digest's legislation tracker.

Bethlehem City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to give initial approval to the city's first zoning rules for data centers, with a final vote scheduled for October 20. The new ordinance would restrict data centers to the Industrial district only, require a public hearing before the Zoning Hearing Board, mandate multiple pre-approval studies covering water, sewer, energy, noise, heat, and emergency plans, and impose a 1,000-foot setback from homes, schools, parks, hospitals, and day cares. A proposed two-story, 65,000-square-foot data center at 2184 Industrial Drive, put forward by Boyle Construction, Paxos, and Tensor IQ of Newark, Delaware, would not be eligible under the new rules but will be reviewed under the current code because its application predates the amendment. That project goes before the city Planning Commission on November 12 in the Town Hall Rotunda.

Newport Township in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania has issued zoning permits for a development that includes 15 closed-loop data centers and three gas generation facilities, township manager Joe Hillan announced at a recent commissioners' meeting. Seven of the data centers would be located in a mixed-use zone and eight in an industrial zone, according to permits issued by third-party zoning officer Jason Humenanski of BHW Construction Consultation Services, Inc. The landowner, situated between the township's Glen Lyon and Lee sections, is still in negotiations with the developer, and financial details have not been disclosed. Commissioner President Paul Czapracki said the project would be a significant revenue source for Newport Township, the surrounding South Valley area, and the Greater Nanticoke Area School District.

Amazon published a lengthy argument defending data center construction, contending that a typical data center uses approximately 170,000 gallons of water per day on average, not the five million gallons figure it says is commonly cited, and that Amazon's own average data center uses fewer than 13,000 gallons per day. The company also disputed that data centers are primarily responsible for rising electricity rates, noting that energy costs have fallen in Indiana and Mississippi and grown more slowly than the national average in Texas despite large data center concentrations there. Amazon cited a statistic that roughly 70 percent of U.S. power lines were built more than 25 years ago, attributing rate increases to underinvestment in grid infrastructure rather than data center demand. The piece also stated that more than 100 data center moratoriums are currently being considered across the country.

Cooling technology company Nexalus ran an eight-month outdoor field trial of two sealed prototype servers at a telecom site in Arlington, Texas, beginning in December 2024, exposing the units to ambient temperatures ranging from minus 7 degrees Celsius to 40 degrees Celsius with no service visits or component changes. Inside the sealed enclosure, air reached 59 degrees Celsius, yet the company reported no throttling, no instability, and no hardware faults; the only downtime resulted from a site power outage. Because the closed loop returns water above 60 degrees Celsius, Nexalus says heat can be rejected through a dry cooler rather than an evaporative tower, bringing water usage to zero. Modeled with Collen Construction and four engineering partners, the company says a 2.5 megawatt retrofit could convert 310 air-cooled racks at 8 kilowatts each into 100 racks at 25 kilowatts, freeing roughly one-third of the floor plate.

At the Data Center World Power event in Dallas, which ran September 21 to 23, industry speakers argued that community opposition has become as significant a site-selection barrier as power availability, with some developers now funding battery energy storage systems, transmission upgrades, and substation equipment to avoid passing costs to ratepayers. Diane Sullivan, chief development officer of Chicago-based Hecate Energy, said obtaining permits before informing the public is a practice that must end, calling early transparency essential for large AI data centers. Dado Slezak, executive vice president of energy capital and strategy at QTS Data Centers, cited a QTS project in Iowa where the company negotiated with the utility to fix and subsidize community electricity rates for five years. Alise Porto, vice president of sustainability and strategic initiatives at Switch, noted that construction employment during development and on-site retraining programs are additional tools for building local support.

Amazon and Constellation Energy announced a 20-year power purchase agreement that will direct 690 MW from Maryland's Calvert Cliffs Clean Energy Center to Amazon, including 190 MW of new generating capacity expected online between 2030 and 2032. The deal enables over $3 billion in Maryland infrastructure investment and will allow Constellation to relicense the 1,790-MW plant for another two decades. Constellation, which describes itself as the largest nuclear energy company in the United States, said revenue certainty from the PPA supports new clean energy development at the site. Amazon Web Services VP Kerry Person said the agreement sustains the operation of Maryland's largest source of carbon-free energy, which currently generates roughly 80% of the state's clean energy and enough electricity to power approximately 1.3 million homes.

Amazon Web Services has filed a Preliminary Land Development Plan for a 36-building data center campus at the Homer City Energy Campus in Indiana County, Pennsylvania, roughly 50 miles east of Pittsburgh. The campus will span 1,100 acres across Center and Blacklick Townships, with each building reaching 70 feet in height and 225,000 square feet of floor space. Construction is scheduled to begin in December 2026 across four phases, with full completion targeted by June 2036; the project is expected to create 1,500 to 2,000 jobs paying average salaries of $80,000 to $100,000. The campus will draw power from a 4.5 GW natural gas facility being built by Homer City Redevelopment on the former site of Pennsylvania's largest coal-burning power plant, with more than 1 GW to be returned to the grid.

Singapore-based data center operator DayOne has filed an IPO prospectus with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, intending to list on Nasdaq under the ticker DODC. As of September 20, the company had 962 MW of capacity in service and 1.3 GW under construction, targeting delivery of the in-construction capacity by December 2028 for a combined total of 2.3 GW. DayOne reported revenue of $512 million for the six months ending June 2026, up from $151 million for the same period in 2025, though it posted a net loss of $77 million over the most recent six months. Reuters previously reported the company was aiming to raise $5 billion at a $20 billion valuation, though DayOne has not publicly confirmed a fundraising target.

Applied Digital has signed an agreement providing access to up to 1 GW of potential power capacity in Finland, marking the Nasdaq-listed company's first development outside the United States. Initial power availability is anticipated beginning in 2028, though full project details have not been disclosed. CEO Wes Cummins cited Finland's climate, energy ecosystem, and connectivity as factors similar to conditions that supported the company's North Dakota operations. Applied Digital's contracted portfolio now spans five AI Factory campuses totaling 1.4 GW of critical IT load and approximately 2.15 GW of grid-connected utility power, with customers including CoreWeave.

Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman announced the company has stopped using nondisclosure agreements with government agencies during data center approval processes, disclosing the change in a blog post that also addressed what he called four myths about data centers. Garman cited more than 100 data center moratoriums currently being considered across the United States, including a one-year moratorium on permits for large data centers in New York. He argued that data center generators run only about 10 hours per year for maintenance testing and that direct data center water consumption accounts for 0.5% of all industrial water usage in the United States, citing an Amazon report. Garman also noted Amazon has contributed more than $1 billion to U.S. communities with significant data center presence over the past three years.

Rising electricity demand from data centers and manufacturing is straining Midwestern power grids, with utilities nationwide requesting $18.6 billion in rate increases so far in 2026, including approximately $3 billion affecting more than 14 million customers in the Midwest, according to a PowerLines report. A poll conducted by PowerLines with Ipsos in March found that 73% of Midwestern respondents noticed higher energy bills than the previous year, and 82% feel powerless to control utility charges. Ryan Hledik, a principal with the Brattle Group and co-author of a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory analysis, said outcomes depend on whether the right policies and customer protections are put in place, warning that without them rates could rise faster than they have over the past five years. Nebraska is the only state in the nation entirely served by publicly owned utilities, making it an outlier as most Midwestern states rely on investor-owned utilities.

Ares Management has increased its investment in Sabey Data Center Properties through its Ares Secondaries funds, bringing its total commitment to more than $500 million following an original minority equity stake announced in July 2026. Sabey's current data center footprint totals 275 MW and approximately four million square feet across the United States, with an expansion pipeline projected to reach roughly 737 MW by 2033. The company operates sites in Quincy, Seattle, and East Wenatchee, Washington; New York City; Austin, Texas; Umatilla, Oregon; Indianapolis, Indiana; and Ashburn, Virginia. Ares, which manages $671 billion in assets and also owns data center firm Ada Infrastructure, said it sees significant runway for continued growth in the platform.

New data center developer Blackstart Digital has acquired the former IBM Almaden Research Center at 650 Harry Road in San Jose, California, a seven-building campus spanning 35 acres and more than 500,000 square feet. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, though the transaction could close before the end of the year and Blackstart has already filed for an environmental review for renovations. The site hosts existing data center space and a 25 MW substation that Blackstart plans to expand; more than 500 acres of adjacent open space will remain undeveloped. The San Jose City Council voted in August to rezone the campus as an industrial park zoning district, a move the Sierra Club opposed due to data center development concerns.

John M. Wilson, who led global design and construction at Google for six years, has joined Anthropic as a member of technical staff focused on EMEA capacity delivery. Before Google, Wilson served as Amazon's European head of design and construction and also held roles as chief of staff at the British Army and director of infrastructure at NATO. Wilson is part of a growing wave of Google infrastructure talent moving to Anthropic; others who have made the shift include Winnie Leung, now Anthropic's head of data center infrastructure, and former Google construction lead Brett Rogers. Additional Google alumni at Anthropic include data center design lead Liwen Mao, electrical lead Adam Johnson, and data center operations manager Zach Miller, among others.

About 12 gigawatts of U.S. data center capacity was scheduled to come online in 2026, but only about a third of it was under active construction in the spring, according to an analysis by Sightline Climate reported by Bloomberg in April. The analysis pointed to shortages of transformers, switchgear, and batteries as a main reason many projects were expected to slip, and the reporting put roughly half of the year's planned builds at risk of delay or cancellation. That equipment accounts for less than 10 percent of a data center's total cost, yet a building cannot be energized without it.

The mismatch is one of timing. Large power transformers took 24 to 30 months to deliver before 2020; Bloomberg reported that high-power units can now take up to five years, while AI data center deployment cycles run under 18 months. Wood Mackenzie's second-quarter 2025 supply chain survey, cited by POWER Magazine, put average lead times at 128 weeks for power transformers and 144 weeks for generator step-up transformers, the large units that connect power plants to the grid.

Wood Mackenzie's August 2025 analysis found that U.S. demand for power transformers had risen 116 percent since 2019 and demand for distribution transformers 41 percent, against projected supply deficits of 30 percent and 10 percent in 2025. Imports were expected to supply 80 percent of power transformers and 50 percent of distribution transformers. “Utilities are routinely turning to the import market to meet project timelines,” said Ben Boucher, a senior analyst at Wood Mackenzie, adding that this was escalating costs and lead times. Bloomberg reported that U.S. imports of high-power transformers from China rose from fewer than 1,500 units in 2022 to more than 8,000 in 2025. Data centers are one demand driver among several: POWER Magazine, summarizing Wood Mackenzie data, also cited roughly 40 million distribution transformers past their expected service life, about 55 percent of the U.S. fleet, along with renewable energy interconnections and a 77 percent rise in power transformer prices since 2019.

Manufacturers are building more capacity, but not quickly. Wood Mackenzie counted $1.8 billion in announced expansions by major equipment makers since 2023. Hitachi Energy said in September that it will build a $528 million transformer factory in Gallman, Mississippi, more than twice the size of its nearby Crystal Springs plant, with construction expected to begin late in 2026 and production scheduled to start in 2029. Siemens Energy announced a $150 million factory in Charlotte, North Carolina, its first U.S. large power transformer plant, citing $3.9 billion pledged to expand and update the U.S. grid within two years. A plant announced in 2026 that begins producing in 2029 does little for a campus being planned for 2027.

Washington has started to respond. On April 20, 2026, President Trump issued a determination under Section 303 of the Defense Production Act describing U.S. capacity to produce transformers, high-voltage transmission components, and other grid equipment as “dangerously limited,” opening the way for federal purchasing and financial support. Utility Dive reported that about $323 million remained available in fiscal 2026 DPA funds, a figure attributed to Jean Su of the Center for Biological Diversity that the White House did not immediately confirm. Spencer Pederson of the National Electrical Manufacturers Association called the move a “step in the right direction” while noting that funding and implementation details were unclear; Su said the funding is “just not that much.”

Not everyone agrees the shortage is a manufacturing problem. In POWER Magazine's reporting, Patrick Tarver of Bolt Electrical argued that “there is not a shortage,” claiming standard substation power transformers can be delivered in 12 to 14 months once engineering approval is complete, and that the real bottleneck is how utilities and engineering contractors structure procurement, with qualification rules and approved-vendor lists that keep alternative suppliers from reaching decision makers. He also said industry messaging was exaggerated to drive pricing. That view sits against the Wood Mackenzie survey data, and the two are not easy to reconcile from the outside.

Whichever account is closer to the truth, the gap that matters to data center developers is the one between schedules. AI data center deployment cycles run under 18 months, while the grid equipment that feeds them is ordered on a clock of two years or more, in a market where imports fill much of the shortfall and new domestic plants are years from output. For now, the pace of the AI buildout is being set less by chip deliveries than by how fast a handful of factories can wind copper around steel.

Crusoe has filed plans with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation for two data center buildings in Jayton, Kent County, each spanning 759,260 square feet, with a combined site investment of $4.8 billion. The buildings are classified as 'spur buildings' of Project Hyper, linking them to Crusoe's larger development in Childress, where three buildings totaling 806,360 square feet represent a $2.4 billion investment each. Construction in Jayton is set to begin in January 2027, with the buildings expected to go live in May and July 2029. Combined with the Childress site, the full Project Hyper investment across both locations would reach $12 billion.

Taiwanese neocloud GMI Cloud has raised $668 million through a $223 million Series B equity round led by ARCHIV and a $445 million credit facility led by CTBC. Participants include Nvidia, Trend Micro, KT Corporation, Kyobo Life, KB Investment, and DSC Investment. GMI, founded in 2023, will use the funds to expand capacity in the US, Taiwan, and the wider APAC region, and to develop its inference services. The company previously announced a $500 million data center in Taoyuan, Taiwan, targeting roughly 7,000 Nvidia GB300 GPUs and 16MW of power capacity housed within a Vantage Data Centers facility.

Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman announced the 'Built Together' program on Friday, committing more than $1 billion over five years to communities near Amazon data centers across the United States. The program focuses on three areas: funding community college and vocational training, providing grants for energy and water efficiency improvements in homes and public buildings, and supporting locally directed projects chosen in consultation with officials and nonprofit groups. The announcement followed a Tuesday White House meeting attended by President Donald Trump and technology executives including Amazon's Jeff Bezos. A September Pew Research report found 54 percent of Americans considered data centers mostly bad for the environment, up from 39 percent in January, while a May Gallup survey found seven in 10 opposed construction of AI data centers in their local area.

Tencent has signed a five-year contract to access 100,000 GPUs across multiple Oracle data centers in Southeast Asia, according to the Financial Times, which cited two people familiar with the matter. The deal is valued at approximately $7 billion, with Tencent paying 30 percent upfront. The arrangement allows Tencent to access GPU hardware unavailable in China due to U.S. export controls, with compute intended primarily for training Hunyuan models, followed by inferencing workloads, and eventually for rental via Tencent Cloud. CFO John Lo and President Martin Lau both addressed the company's AI infrastructure spending, with Lau noting that infrastructure could be rented out at cost recovery prices via Tencent Cloud if other plans do not materialize.

U.S. electricity transmission capacity is falling far short of projected needs, with analysts at ICF forecasting residential rates could rise another 15 to 40 percent over the next five years and potentially double by 2050. The Department of Energy concluded in 2024 that the country would need to double or quadruple transmission capacity by 2050, requiring roughly 5,000 miles of new high-capacity regional lines per year; the U.S. built only 5,000 miles total over the nine years from 2017 through 2025, averaging just 600 miles per year since 2017. In August 2026, Energy Secretary Chris Wright canceled three proposed National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors that the Department of Energy had advanced in December 2024. A bipartisan Senate bill to reform transmission permitting has been introduced, but the current congressional session is running short.

The Supreme Court of Ohio ruled that a citizen-proposed data center zoning ordinance cannot appear on the November 3 general election ballot in Wilmington, Ohio. The court found that the ordinance improperly included a private right of action allowing residents to sue data center operators for zoning violations, which is beyond a municipality's constitutional authority to enact. The proposed measure, submitted by Quintin Koger Kidd and Susan Croutwater, would have set enforceable standards for noise, lighting, water use, heat generation, and airborne emissions, with fines of $5,000 or $10,000 per day and potential suspension of a data center's certificate of occupancy. The Clinton County Board of Elections had unanimously voted not to certify the initiative after Wilmington Law Director Desmond Cullimore cited the court's 2018 ruling in State ex rel. Bolzenius v. Preisse.

Castrol launched Castrol CORE on September 29 in Singapore, a new service offering that integrates coolant products with design, system integration, testing, and maintenance for data centre liquid cooling. The service targets high-density AI infrastructure and is delivered through a network of hardware and service partners, with a dedicated team that includes specialists with backgrounds at firms such as Schneider, Vertiv, Eaton, IBM, and ABB. Castrol established its data centre and thermal management division three years ago in response to rising demand for cooling high-density servers. India is identified as a strategic growth market for Castrol CORE, with local stock available to support deployments.

Governor Abigail Spanberger has signed an executive order creating the Data Center Accountability Framework, which her office describes as the most comprehensive and aggressive data center accountability effort in the United States. The order bans non-disclosure agreements for data center projects, calls for expedited development of noise regulations, and initiates a review of backup generators, particularly diesel-powered units, for their environmental impact on communities. The framework also directs creation of an AI task force to address workforce displacement, data privacy, and cybersecurity concerns, and establishes a planning and community engagement toolkit for local governments. Virginia joins New York and Texas, where governors have each separately moved to slow or pause data center development amid growing public concern over power and water consumption.

Investor Kevin O'Leary, known from the television show Shark Tank, announced a data center development called Wonder Valley on 40,000 acres north of Great Salt Lake in Box Elder County, Utah, backed by a dedicated gas power plant projected to generate 9 gigawatts of electricity. Box Elder County commissioners approved the project unanimously but were officially informed it was coming only five weeks before the vote, and neighboring landowners, including rancher Tim Munns, said they had received no formal notification at all. O'Leary publicly accused online critics of being funded by China, then later retracted the claim, and he and Fox News were subsequently sued for defamation by Alliance for a Better Utah, Elevate Strategies, Gabrielle Finlayson, and Joshua Kanter. O'Leary Digital CEO Paul Palandjian, after describing himself as transparent, responded to interview requests through a lawyer threatening legal action over false statements.

A study by the Illinois Economic Policy Institute and the University of Illinois Project for Middle Class Renewal projects that $57 billion in new data center investments through 2035 will create 121,000 jobs in Illinois, though only 2,800 of those would be direct, permanent positions. The report estimates data centers would generate nearly $300 million in annual property tax revenue once operational, while adding an average of $12 per month to Illinois residents' utility bills, a figure utility watchdogs call too low. In 2024, Meta paid $31 million in property taxes on its data center in DeKalb County, though the city reduced the assessed taxes, limiting the benefit to local homeowners. The report puts forward 10 policy proposals, including a ban on local property tax abatements, after lawmakers failed to pass data center regulations in the spring session and Governor JB Pritzker paused the state's data center tax incentive program.

According to an IndexBox report, the global liquid cooling manifolds market is forecast to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 12 to 18 percent from 2026 to 2035, driven by rising rack power densities in data centers, high-performance computing, and semiconductor manufacturing. Data centers are the largest end-use segment, accounting for an estimated 45 percent of global demand, with rack power densities exceeding 30 kW making traditional air cooling inadequate. Asia-Pacific and North America together represent 70 to 75 percent of global consumption, while the Americas source 60 to 70 percent of manifold requirements through imports. Standard-grade manifolds trade in a USD 80 to 200 unit price range, while premium specifications command two to three times that figure, and replacement cycles of three to five years generate recurring aftermarket revenue. Named market participants include Vertiv Holdings, Schneider Electric, CoolIT Systems, Asetek, and Boyd Corporation.

On September 21, 2026, Texas Governor Greg Abbott directed the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to halt issuance of all permits related to data center projects until ERCOT completes an audit of impacts on the state's electric grid and water resources. The pause covers permits for power generation, water rights, and wastewater infrastructure, and extends to projects outside ERCOT's footprint and below any megawatt threshold. Abbott also directed that no other state agency move forward with regulatory approvals for data centers until ERCOT receives requested information. ERCOT expects to publish findings from its State and Community Impact review no later than December 10, 2026, but no firm end date for the permitting pause has been set.

Pennsylvania's House Energy Committee advanced three bills on Wednesday aimed at preventing electricity customers from absorbing infrastructure costs tied to data center growth, after bills have risen by up to 20% two years in a row. House Bill 2828, introduced by Chairperson Elizabeth Fiedler (D-Philadelphia), would codify in state law that data center developers must pay for utility infrastructure upgrades needed to serve them, aligning with a Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission rate model issued in May. House Bill 2755, sponsored by Rep. Chris Pielli (D-Chester), would mandate investor-owned transmission companies join PJM Interconnection, eliminating a 0.5% profit bonus paid by customers; a similar move saved New Jersey ratepayers about $20 million a year. House Bill 2775, co-sponsored by Rep. Kyle Donahue (D-Lackawanna) and Fiedler, would require data center developers to apply for electric service and pay associated fees before seeking zoning approval, to filter out speculative projects.

Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) and Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Delaware) introduced two federal bills to increase transparency around large data center development and give communities independent information on potential impacts. The Data Center Community Empowerment Act would create a program at the U.S. Department of Energy to provide expert advice to state, local, and tribal governments on electricity demand, water use, economic impacts, and projected tax revenues, while explicitly barring the department from recommending project approvals. The Data Center Transparency Act would require the Environmental Protection Agency to report every three months on nationwide water consumption, reuse, water availability impacts, pollutant discharges, and greenhouse gas emissions, while the Energy Information Administration would report at least every six months on energy use and effects on household electricity bills. The bills were assigned to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, respectively.

LG Electronics has joined the NVIDIA Partner Network as a Power and Cooling Solution Preferred Partner, gaining qualification for its 2.6-megawatt Coolant Distribution Unit as an NVIDIA DSX Ready CDU, which LG says is the largest cooling capacity among current DSX Ready CDU partners. The company has also completed NVIDIA infrastructure qualification for its 600 kW and 1 MW CDUs, covering cooling performance, failover capabilities, and reliability. The CDUs use direct-to-chip liquid cooling and are designed to work alongside existing air-cooling infrastructure. LG plans to display the qualified units at Data Centre World Asia 2026 on September 29 and 30 in Singapore, and aims to complete NVIDIA qualification for a 4.0 MW CDU by the end of 2026.

SoftBank Group has completed its acquisition of all outstanding common stock of DigitalBridge Group for approximately $3.1 billion, making DigitalBridge a controlled subsidiary. DigitalBridge will continue to operate as a separately managed platform under current CEO Marc Ganzi, and the deal does not involve any of its portfolio companies. As a result of the transaction, DigitalBridge is no longer listed on the New York Stock Exchange.