The US data center boom is meeting its human cost — and Wall Street has noticed. Reuters reports that banks and asset managers are now folding community opposition into their due diligence for AI infrastructure loans, after research firm Data Center Watch counted at least 75 projects worth about $130 billion facing local resistance in the first quarter of 2026.
'Readiness means all the permitting and approvals that are required, and the community support from the people who are going to live around it,' said Karen Fang, global head of infrastructure and sustainable finance at Bank of America. The new calculus reflects complaints about noise, appearance, power bills and water use that have prompted governments worldwide to freeze, restrict or even ban data center construction.
Concrete cases illustrate the stakes: JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley managed a $12.3 billion bond sale for BlackRock's El Paso data center project with Meta, despite resident opposition; Blackstone-owned QTS did not seek bank financing for its now-terminated Prince William Digital Gateway project in Virginia; and CyrusOne's $9.7 billion warehouse credit facility with Morgan Stanley and KKR covers a company fighting local resistance to a $500 million center in Illinois.
None of this is cooling the sector: Goldman Sachs forecasts big tech will spend more than $6 trillion on AI through 2030, and bankers say demand for compute remains strong enough that investors are pricing in cancellation risk. Developers, for their part, are trying to pre-empt conflicts — for example by building on-site power generation.
