RAW PECAI MARKET & ECOSYSTEM ADVISORY

Battleground 01 Emerging

Who Decides Where AI Gets Built?

Permission to build: power, land, water and public consent

The management question

Which of your AI plans assumes capacity that hasn't been permitted yet?

Stack layers

Contested layers: 1 Physical and energy foundations

Adjacent layers: 2 Compute, cloud and security

Contest dimensions

  • Power
  • Land
  • Water
  • Ratepayer costs
  • Local consent

Context

Polls in 2026 put local opposition to AI data centers between 46% and 75%; Gallup found 71% (March 2026). Opposition crosses party lines.

Participants

Federal accelerators

  • White House (Accelerator): July 2025 executive order speeding federal permitting for data center projects over 100 MW
  • Federal Permitting Council (Accelerator): first FAST-41 data center designation, April 2026

State gatekeepers

  • New York (Gatekeeper): Executive Order 62, July 14, 2026, first statewide pause on discretionary environmental permitting for the largest data centers
  • Pennsylvania (Gatekeeper): executive order requiring local approval before state permits
  • Texas (Gatekeeper): governor called for a ban on new data centers in rural neighborhoods

Local gatekeepers

  • Local communities (Gatekeeper): 300+ cities, towns and counties with bans or moratoriums
  • Seattle (Gatekeeper): unanimous council freeze on new large data center builds, June 2026

Builders

  • Hyperscalers (Builder)
  • Neoclouds (Builder)

Ecosystem Moves

How the players are building, buying and partnering to compete in this battleground. Newest first.

0 Build · 0 Buy · 3 Partner · 2 Compete

  • Partner
    Nebius / Bloom Energy

    fuel cells to power AI factory build-out; "Power remains a key constraint"

  • Partner
    White House / data center developers

    Ratepayer Protection Pledge; developers commit to cover the full cost of new generation for their demand

  • Partner
    Meta / Vistra / TerraPower / Oklo

    nuclear agreements of more than 6 gigawatts for AI data centers

  • Compete
    Federal / states

    the administration's AI preemption order leaves data center zoning to the states

  • Compete
    Local opposition / projects

    75 major projects worth more than $130 billion delayed or canceled in Q1 2026, partly due to organized local opposition

Independent and unsponsored: no company pays to appear in these battlegrounds.

Sources
  1. National Law Review — White House aims to accelerate environmental permitting for data centers
  2. LexBlog — federal data center permitting
  3. Brownstein — Data Center Moratoriums and Executive Action: New York and Maine's Near Miss
  4. Governing — Data Centers Are Spreading. So Are Moratoriums
  5. Tiger Brokers — data center permitting and opposition
  6. Bioethics.com — local opposition to data centers
  7. Iceotope — Where the Compute Goes When the Moratorium Lands, Part 1
  8. MultiState — Federal AI Data Center Policy Meets Resistance From State Lawmakers
  9. Snell & Wilmer — Building in Arizona's Data Center Boom
  10. Gallup — Americans Oppose Data Centers in Their Area
  11. ITIF — Data Centers Are Americans' Least-Favored Form of Development
  12. Nebius, "Nebius and Bloom Energy partner to power AI infrastructure build-out," May 20, 2026
  13. Quartz, Meta nuclear agreements, January 2026

Evidence checked through:

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