Methodology

Scope

United States government actions from January 2020 through the as-of date that were adopted and remain in force. An action blocked by a court order stays counted until a final ruling and is labeled as enjoined. "Government action" is read broadly: zoning and rezoning votes, special-use and variance decisions, moratoriums and bans, restrictive ordinances, utility service denials, incentive decisions, ballot measures, tribal government action, and state executive orders that gate data center permitting or interconnection.

Tracked but not counted: proposals not yet voted, first readings, advisory or planning-commission recommendations awaiting a final body, and actions that have expired, been rescinded, or been superseded.

What counts as an approval

A verified, discrete government approval of a specific data center project: a rezoning, special or conditional use permit, site plan, development or incentive agreement, or utility commission order, by a body with authority to grant it. Announcements, groundbreakings, policy-wide text amendments and advisory recommendations do not count. Each separate approval is its own record (a county rezoning and a later state utility order for the same campus are two approvals), and records about the same project are linked. An approval that is later rescinded, voided by a court, or overturned leaves the count. Every counted approval carries its stage and the gates that remain, so a rezoning is never presented as permission to build.

What counts as an adverse action

• Project-level: a specific proposed data center was denied, blocked, or withdrawn under opposition. 146 counted (105 excluding withdrawals).
• Area-wide: a jurisdiction-wide moratorium, ban, or restrictive ordinance, whether or not a project was pending. 922 counted.

A restrictive ordinance counts only if it is material: an outright ban; the end of by-right approval (a special or conditional use now required everywhere data centers had been allowed); data centers confined to a single district behind a setback of 1,000 feet or more; a size cap below hyperscale; or an off-grid requirement. Rules that add conditions without restricting where or whether data centers can be built do not count.

When moratoriums end

• Extended: the existing record is updated and stays counted.
• Expired with no extension found: leaves the count.
• Replaced by rules that let data centers in under conditions: leaves the count, with no successor.
• Replaced by a material restriction: the moratorium leaves the count and the new rule is counted as its own record.

Withdrawals

Developer withdrawals are counted as adverse only where the record shows the pullout was opposition-driven, often days before an expected losing vote. Business-driven walk-aways are not counted. Every withdrawal is tagged; excluding all 41 leaves 105 project-level adverse actions.

The precedent library

• Each condition is coded as a value with a unit and cited to the page of the government document, with the operative words quoted. Quotes are checked automatically against the text of the cited page.
• Terms from proposed versions (staff reports, planning commission recommendations, drafts) are kept separate from adopted terms.
• Each record is labeled: verified from the official record (69), partly verified (46), or secondary sources only (7). Where a document could not be obtained, the category is marked unknown.
• Terms found only in news coverage, in records a government had not published, or in automatic video captions are held out of the library.

Verification

• Every counted record cites at least one source; official records are retrieved where available. Claims made only by an advocacy group are not counted on their own.
• Approvals from 2024 to 2026 have been checked against their government documents, and approvals from 2020 to 2023 have been re-checked for later reversal.
• Temporary actions are re-checked at their end dates. Expired actions leave the count unless an extension is verified.
• Records first found in other public trackers are re-verified from the original coverage and described in my own words; the tracker is credited as the lead.
• I do not bypass paywalls, logins, or other access controls to collect records.

Counts are floors

There is no national registry of local data center decisions; this database is built from systematic searches of local government records and local news. Growth between refreshes reflects wider coverage as well as new events, and backfills can raise earlier months. Read every count as "at least this many." The $49.1 billion of investment behind adverse actions is the documented value on the 25 records where a value is published, not an estimate for all 1,068.

Corrections

• October 23, 2026: Loudoun County's 12-month pause on new data center applications left the count: the board directed staff to draft it but has not adopted it. Two duplicate New Jersey records were merged (Monroe Township; Winslow Township's September amendment, now part of its May ban), and Clinton Township's ordinance number was corrected to 1236-2026.
• October 2, 2026: the state count is 45, not 46. One record carried its state as an abbreviation and was counted twice.
• October 2, 2026: approvals corrected from 177 to 170 after the document review and the reversal re-check: records that were not discrete project approvals, duplicates, unverifiable events, and one approval rescinded by the government were removed; three verified approvals were added.
• October 2, 2026: a summary of property tax abatements was withdrawn because it mixed different kinds of tax terms.
• October 1, 2026: older adverse actions were re-checked against current sources; lapsed and replaced moratoriums left the count and wrongly excluded ones returned.

Known limits

• The most recent month is searched less thoroughly at first and usually rises on the next refresh.
• Adverse actions and approvals measure different things: most adverse actions are area-wide, while approvals concern a specific project. Comparisons between them say nothing about the odds for any single project.
• Jurisdictions can appear on both sides; these are distinct actions, not double counting.