The biggest upcoming projects are in Texas, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Mississippi, Ohio, Wisconsin and Nebraska. Major build-outs by multiple companies are underway in the Nevada desert. Kentucky is one of several states that could see a data center boom.
A Bloomberg analysis found that monthly electricity costs have gone up as much as 267 percent in areas near big data centers. Three U.S. senators (all Democrats) recently announced they were investigating the relationship between the costs of supplying electricity to data centers and consumer prices. (An analysis by scientists at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory found that, on average, increases in state-level load have “tended to reduce” retail electricity prices.)
At least 36 states offer tax incentives to lure data center projects. At present, Virginia (668) and Texas (429) lead in total numbers. According to research by Good Jobs First, data center tax abatement cost Texas more than $1 billion in 2025, one of the most expensive subsidy programs for any industry. In 2024, Virginia tax exemptions also cost the state $1 billion. At least 10 states lose tax revenue in excess of $100 million per year to data centers, Good Jobs found.
Data centers need water to bring down temperatures in their equipment and buildings. For a large data center, this can be as much as 5 million gallons each day, as much as a town of 50,000 people might need. Governments, environmental groups and residents are worried about supply consequences for other users.
Facility quantity isn’t the only measure of state success in attracting investment. The $10 billion data center Meta is building in rural Louisiana will be one of the world’s largest.
