The largest data centers are increasingly landing in rural communities, raising questions about who bears the costs as the next wave of hyperscale projects comes online.
A recent analysis mapped the nation’s largest planned and operating facilities using power-capacity data from Clean View, which tracks U.S. power infrastructure. The map highlights the nine largest operating data centers and the nine largest facilities in development, with symbol sizes scaled to megawatt capacity, the electricity a site can draw from the grid at a given moment.
There are about 1,300 data centers currently operating in the United States with a combined capacity of 61,148 megawatts. Nearly 3,000 additional facilities are in planning, totaling 378,246 megawatts. That works out to an estimated 126 megawatts per planned site, compared with about 47 megawatts per facility among those already running, indicating many forthcoming projects will be significantly larger than the existing fleet.
To illustrate the scale, a 500-megawatt data center can consume as much electricity in a day as roughly 420,000 U.S. homes. Ten of the 18 facilities on the map exceed 1,000 megawatts, or 1 gigawatt, a level that can match the daily power use of about 850,000 households. The largest identified project is the Delta Gigasite Expansion in Millard County, Utah, at 9.7 gigawatts.
Largest data centers shift toward rural siting
Of the nine biggest operating sites, seven are in metropolitan counties and two are in nonmetropolitan, or rural, counties. Among the nine largest planned projects, however, five are slated for nonmetropolitan counties, signaling a pivot to rural locations.
Two of the three largest planned facilities are in nonmetropolitan counties. The third, the Fermi Project Matador in Carson County, Texas, is within the Amarillo Metropolitan Statistical Area, which places it in a metropolitan county under the Office of Management and Budget’s classification. Even so, 100 percent of Carson County’s residents live outside Census-defined Urban Areas, which could support an alternative view of the county as rural.
The analysis follows the OMB’s county-based binary rural-urban framework for consistency across datasets. Using that standard, Carson County is counted as metropolitan in the data. With a population of about 5,800, the county faces many of the same challenges as other small rural communities when negotiating with hyperscale developers backed by major technology firms.
Previous reporting has found that while some small towns have repelled data center proposals, rural jurisdictions often have fewer resources to vet agreements or respond to closures.
Communities with higher poverty and limited broadband
Several of the nation’s largest planned facilities are sited in counties with elevated poverty and uninsurance rates and limited broadband access.
- In counties hosting the largest planned data centers, 19 percent of residents live in poverty. In the subset that are nonmetropolitan, the poverty rate is 17 percent, based on 2018–2023 American Community Survey five-year estimates. The national rate is 12 percent.
- Broadband gaps are also wider. In counties with major planned facilities, 15 percent of residents lack broadband access. In nonmetropolitan counties, the figure is 16 percent, compared with about 11 percent nationally.
- Health insurance coverage lags as well. In counties with the largest planned data centers, 20 percent of residents are uninsured, versus about 8 percent nationwide. In nonmetropolitan counties, 12 percent lack coverage.
Public health reporting has warned that the buildout could exacerbate risks in communities least equipped to shoulder them. Diesel backup generators at data centers emit exhaust harmful to human health. Researchers at the University of California, Riverside, in 2024 estimated that data centers could be linked to approximately 600,000 asthma cases nationwide by 2028, contributing to 1,300 premature deaths annually.
A 2025 report from the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative found higher air pollution within one mile of data centers than the national median, with communities of color facing disproportionate exposure. A 2025 report from the Kapor Foundation described a pattern in which large technology developers select “vulnerable communities as sacrifice zones.”
Taken together, the siting of the largest data centers points to a rapid scale-up in power demand and a greater share of mega-projects in rural counties, many of which contend with higher poverty, limited broadband, and uneven access to health care. Similar concerns about how technology deployment affects local communities surfaced when emerging markets accelerators favored resilience over hype, underscoring tradeoffs between innovation and community well-being.