Data Centers Meet the Neighbors

Large US tech companies are expected to spend more than $800 billion on data centers and AI this year. New figures from Heatmap Pro, Heatmap's market-intelligence service, show that local opposition is now cancelling a large share of that buildout.

The numbers

At least $260 billion in data center investment was canceled in 2026 after sustained local opposition. The pace is speeding up. About $130 billion, roughly half the year's total, was canceled in the three months ending September 30. In dollar terms, Q3 2026 cancellations alone were larger than all data center cancellations in 2025.

Around $1 trillion of data center investment now faces "sustained or meaningful" local opposition. Of the projects that ran into backlash this year, about half were ultimately canceled.

Heatmap says its figures are larger than other published estimates and are probably still an undercount, for two reasons:

• Only about 60% of data center projects disclose their planned investment. Disclosure is weakest at the early proposal stage, which is when projects are most likely to fail.
• The totals leave out some projects stalled by state-level moratoriums in Texas and New York.

How projects die

Heatmap Pro tracks cancellations through a continuous survey of public officials, regulatory filings and local media. Most canceled projects in its database died in one of two ways: they , or they ran into . now have a ban or moratorium on data center construction.

A bipartisan group of senators, led by Martin Heinrich and Sheldon Whitehouse, has released text for a federal permitting bill. On Latitude Media's Open Circuit, host Stephen Lacey, Jigar Shah of Multiplier and Jane Flegal of the States Forum and Searchlight Institute went through what it does. All three back the bill, and the episode reads that way. Lacey says today's permitting process adds years to projects and can raise their costs by 30%.

What's in it

• Environmental review: reviews now have hard deadlines for anything that needs a federal permit. Lawsuits also face deadlines. If a court finds a flaw in the NEPA process, the project goes back to the agency to fix it instead of being blocked indefinitely. Substantive Clean Air Act rules are untouched, and the Clean Water Act changes are mostly procedural.
• Permit certainty: it becomes harder for a president to block or revoke permits. Shah says the bill is aimed at stopping both parties from using routine reviews as weapons against projects they dislike.
• Transmission: FERC gets backstop siting authority. States get a deadline and a process to object or reroute a line, but they can no longer kill an interstate line outright. The bill also requires forward-looking transmission planning and asks FERC to use AI in transmission analysis. Aggregated distributed resources, such as virtual power plants, get access to regional markets.
• Data centers: loads of 20 MW or more can't pass grid upgrade costs on to other ratepayers. Under existing Federal Power Act rules, a new load paid either its share of the existing grid or the cost of its new connection, whichever was higher. Flegal says it now pays both. Non-firm interconnection becomes its own tariff category, states can give large loads queue priority, and hyperscalers must report how much energy they use.

Maryland's Public Service Commission (PSC) announced the winners of the first energy storage solicitation under the 2025 Next Generation Energy Act on Oct. 1, the statutory deadline. It selected two transmission-connected battery projects totaling 440 MW/1,760 MWh. The target for the round was 800 MW.

The winners:

• Chalk Point Storage (Flatiron Energy): 400 MW/1,600 MWh, sited at NRG's oil- and gas-fired Chalk Point plant in Prince George's County.
• Jade Meadow III (REV Renewables): 40 MW/160 MWh, built on part of a reclaimed coal mine in Garrett County, near the West Virginia and Pennsylvania borders.

Both get flat pricing for 15 years. The PSC puts the combined cost at 6.98 cents per month for the average residential customer.

How the program works

The law requires at least two solicitations totaling 1.6 GW of storage. Projects must be able to discharge at full power for at least four hours. Bidding for round two must open by Jan. 1, 2027, with awards due by Oct. 1, 2027.

The PSC passed on two other options. One was the 500 MW/3,000 MWh Oystercatcher project in Harford County. The commission praised its "desirable electric grid location and characteristics," but said more engagement with local stakeholders is needed, and invited it to bid in round two. The other was a 135 MW/540 MWh expansion of Chalk Point. Flatiron requested it in a revised filing after the application window had closed, and it can reapply. Together, the two projects would have taken the round past its target.

Homes and the grid run on alternating current, and EV batteries store direct current. Because of that mismatch, almost every vehicle-to-home (V2H) system sold in the U.S. needs a DC bidirectional charger, a separate box on the house that turns the car's DC into AC. Tesla is the one exception. On Tuesday it extended AC bidirectional charging, which the Cybertruck has had for over a year, to its new Model 3 and Model Y. These cars do the power conversion with their own onboard hardware.

How it works and what it costs

Every EV already has hardware that converts incoming AC to DC to charge its battery. Colby Hastings, who runs Tesla Energy's residential business, says running that conversion in reverse inside the car costs much less than buying separate equipment for the house.

There's a catch for the Model 3 and Model Y: the home needs a Powerwall 3, which retails for $8,200 plus several thousand dollars to install. The Powerwall is already a complete backup system. Adding the car takes only Tesla's standard $595 Wall Connector and gives two to three more days of backup power. Cybertruck owners don't need a Powerwall. They pay $1,990 for a V2H hardware package plus about $1,800–$2,200 for installation. A DC bidirectional charger alone typically costs $6,500 to $10,000 or more, before any home battery.

Eli Darby of PG&E says customers have hit a spending limit. Equipment, installation and interconnection for DC systems run $10,000–$15,000, and that has held back sign-ups in the utility's V2H pilots with GM, Kia, Nissan, Polestar and Volvo. PG&E is now certifying AC setups and is piloting interconnection of Tesla's systems. Darby calls Tesla "the lead product to market."

The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) plans to electrify the Fairmount Line, a 10-mile commuter route through Dorchester and Mattapan, using battery-powered trains rather than overhead wires. It will lease seven four-car trains from the Swiss manufacturer Stadler for 15 years. The deal is expected to cost $765 million. Leasing lets the agency learn how the technology performs before it decides whether to use it more widely.

The trains are scheduled to arrive in 2030. According to the MBTA, they will raise service from every 30 minutes to every 20 and cut 17,700 tons of CO2 a year compared with the diesels they replace. Local advocates, led by Marvin Martin of Action For Equity, spent nearly three decades pushing for more stops and for electrification. Their main goal was to end diesel particulate pollution in a mostly Black and Latino corridor.

The trade-off: no wires, but limited proof

Battery trains avoid the cost and complexity of installing catenary, the overhead power lines. The open question is whether they can handle heavy commuter loads. Chris Friend of TransitMatters calls Fairmount a logical starting point because it is the MBTA's shortest commuter route. He notes, though, that battery trains are not yet widely used on busy routes anywhere in the world. Alstom runs battery trains on a 50-mile German route that carries 2 million riders a year. Its US spokesperson admits the technology is best suited to "medium ridership."

More data is coming soon. Caltrain plans to add battery trains by 2028, and Chicago's has a similar timeline. The MBTA is also mixing approaches, with plans for both battery and catenary trains on its Providence Line. Fuel costs strengthen the case for electrification: diesel averaged $6.32 a gallon this week, up from $3.70 a year ago.