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The closing bell is done talking, and somewhere a county board is just calling its meeting to order. Evening.
The backlash is winning the votes. It's losing the race.
Towns keep saying no to data centers, and the money keeps saying it doesn't matter. They're both right.
This morning I called Amazon's $1 billion pledge a sign the backlash is winning. I still think so. Then Goldman Sachs put out a weekend note that reads like the opposite argument.
Goldman raised its call for U.S. data center capacity by 5 GW, to 64 GW by the end of this year. It trimmed 2027 by the same 5 GW. Its verdict: the growth outlook through 2027 "remains largely unchanged."
Now the other side. Only 14% of Americans want a data center near them, per a Reuters/Ipsos poll in June. More than 530 counties and towns now restrict or block them, by Heatmap's count. Nearly 190 of those rules passed after June 1.
JLL flags a stranger number: 79% of Americans want the U.S. to lead in AI. That's a 65-point gap between wanting the race and wanting the building.
Record anger. An unchanged forecast. Both can be true only if they're about different buildings.
66 GW
Data center capacity under construction in North America, 95% already pre-committed — JLL, Aug. 11, 2026
That's the part a town vote can't reach. Those projects already have land, permits and tenants. JLL says anyone signing for space today is buying 2028 delivery.
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So what does a "no" actually stop? Not the boom. It stops the next site, and that makes every site that already got a "yes" worth more.
Housing ran this play first. When a town blocks new homes, the demand doesn't go away. The homes already standing just get pricier. Their owners win.
Data centers are in the same spot now. Vacancy has sat at 1% for three straight years, JLL says, and rents are up nearly 70% since 2020. CBRE found prices rose as much as another 8.3% in the first half of 2026, depending on deal size. Every county that says no hands a raise to the landlord who already got a yes.
And the demand doesn't leave. It drives to the next county. Peter Freed, Meta's former director of energy strategy, told Heatmap as much.
"I don't think we're anywhere close to a breaking point yet. It's still a big country."
— Peter Freed, former director of energy strategy at Meta, via Heatmap
He has a point. About 90% of U.S. counties still haven't banned or seriously restricted data centers, by Heatmap's own tally. The map is shrinking, but it isn't gone.
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Moved, not stopped: Frontier markets now hold 77% of all capacity under development, per JLL. The build is leaving the old hubs, not the country. |
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The fight is up ahead: More than 200 pending projects are being fought locally, Heatmap says. Those are future buildings, not this year's. |
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The first fingerprint: Goldman raised 2026 and cut 2027. It didn't say why. My read: the further out you look, the more the "no" votes count. |
So who loses? Not the hyperscalers, and not anyone holding approved, powered land. The loser is whoever needs space after 2028. They'll pay scarcity prices for land that a county has already agreed to.
That's how I read Amazon's billion tonight. It isn't a peace offering. It's the going rate for a yes, in a market where yes is the scarce thing.
Saying no doesn't stop the boom. It decides who gets paid for it.
The doors that close tonight raise the rent on everyone already inside.
— Theodore
The Capital Current ⚡
Every financial story has a power line running through it.
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