Energy and AI buildout map
Across the US, — GW of new power is waiting to connect to the grid, compared with — GW operating today. — local restrictions are in effect, — renewable projects have been contested, and — protests against energy or data center projects have been recorded since 2017. Epoch's US AI data centers have — GW of power planned, with — GW running today.Epoch lists no large AI data centers there.
Ask a question about this data, such as who pays for a new data center's power or where towns have signed community agreements.
Where it's happening
Original energy layers use 2017 county boundaries. Counties are shaded by the source you pick. Large dots are the biggest AI data centers, sized by planned power; small gray dots are other data center buildings mapped in OpenStreetMap. Click a county to zoom to its state.
Waiting to connect
—GW
Still in the grid queue at the end of 2025. — GW operate today and — GW are under construction.
Local restrictions in effect
—
Bans, moratoria, setbacks and other limits tracked by the Sabin Center. NREL finds wind or solar siting rules in — places.
Contested projects
—
— still pending and — canceled after local opposition
AI data center power planned
—GW
— GW running today across — large sites. OpenStreetMap shows — data center buildings. Not affected by the technology filter.
Protests against projects
—
Since 2017. — targeted data centers, a count the technology filter doesn't change.
Protests against energy and data center projects, per year
Each protest counts once, under what it targeted. Pipeline rallies include some held far from the pipeline, such as at banks that fund it. The latest year is partial.
Local restrictions adopted per year
Includes rules that have since expired.
What happened to contested projects
Waiting to connect vs built today
Grid queue at the end of 2025 against EIA's operating plants. Batteries paired with solar or wind count as storage.
Power at the largest AI data centers
The five sites with the most planned power. Dashed lines are Epoch's plans after today.
About the data
- Grid backlog: Berkeley Lab's interconnection queue data through 2025, counting requests still marked active and every resource in each request. Berkeley Lab's own headline total is higher because it adds estimated battery sizes for hybrid projects that don't list one.
- Built today and under construction: EIA's monthly generator inventory (Form EIA-860M) for September 2026. Plants under 1 MW are not included.
- Restrictions and contested projects: the Sabin Center's 2026 data. It covers wind, solar, storage and transmission only, so the gas filter shows none.
- Siting rules: NREL's 2025 wind and solar ordinance databases, counted as places (counties, towns and townships) with any rule. Most are ordinary setbacks or height limits, not bans. NREL collected them with AI and says to check them before relying on any one.
- Protests: the Crowd Counting Consortium's US protest data, 2017 onward, from Harvard Dataverse. Only protests whose claims oppose a data center, wind, solar, storage, transmission, pipeline, gas or power plant project are counted, matched by keyword, so expect some misses.
- Largest AI data centers: Epoch AI's frontier data centers, US sites only. Each site is placed by its ZIP code, or at the center of the county named in Epoch's notes when the address has none. Planned power is the highest power in the site's timeline.
- Other data centers: buildings and sites tagged as data centers in OpenStreetMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL). One campus can count as several buildings, and coverage is uneven.
- County outlines are the Census Bureau's 2017 boundaries, so Connecticut shows its former counties.