# Methodology: US data centers, operating stock and pipeline (Moraine Research, third edition, data as of 2026-10-09)

Source: public records only. Facility inventories (OpenStreetMap, PNNL Data Center Atlas, EPA Facility Registry Service); operator websites and SEC filings; state utility commission dockets, FERC, NYISO and EIA-860M; EPA ECHO and ICIS-Air, state air permits, stormwater and water permits; county plan cases, Legistar matters, Georgia DRI, CEQA and SEPA, FAA obstruction filings; county assessor data-center use codes; state tax-exemption rosters; Overture Maps building footprints; news reports; local government records on moratoriums. No paid data and no API keys.

## Campus set
- About 30,000 public records joined into campuses by position, operator and project codename. A permit, a utility filing and a press report for the same site count once.
- 3,790 data center campuses. 187 network and carrier facilities (carrier hotels, network points of presence) are a separate map layer and are not counted.
- 976 campuses are confirmed by two or more independent source types.
- 988 campuses are placed at a town center (approximate position) and drawn as hollow markers on the map.
- 107 data center filings with no site location are counted by county (46 county entries in 19 states) and not mapped.
- Property records: county assessor parcels with data-center use codes in Loudoun County VA, Prince William County VA, Maricopa County AZ, Franklin County OH, Utah County UT, Douglas County NE and Grant County WA. Only entity owners are published.
- Buildings: 2,236 buildings at the record locations of 1,180 campuses, from Overture Maps building footprints.
- Recall was measured against independent public lists of data centers.

## Stage ladder
Each record proves one stage; a campus takes the highest stage among its records.
- 8 Operating: facility inventory, operator disclosure, active EPA registration or operating permit.
- 7 Partly energized: operator or utility states partial energization.
- 6 Under construction: construction visible in imagery, a construction start in a filing, or an OpenStreetMap construction tag.
- 5 Permitted: air or building permit issued.
- 4 Approved or incentive granted: rezoning or special use approved, executed utility agreement, or tax incentive certified.
- 3 Entitlement filed: rezoning, special use, DRI, CEQA or SEPA filing.
- 2 Utility power requested: large-load request, queue entry or letter of intent at a utility or grid operator.
- 1 Site control: land purchase, option or entity formation tied to the project.
- 0 Codename only.
- Announced: a developer or official announced the project in the press; no public filing has been found yet. 501 projects, kept out of the pipeline count; 140 of them were later reported withdrawn, blocked, cancelled or paused.
- Stages 7 and 6, and 1 and 0, are counted together. Withdrawn, blocked, cancelled, paused and moratorium are recorded as status, not stage.
- Counts: operating 1,686; under construction or partly energized 113; permitted 219; approved or incentive granted 273; entitlement filed 99; utility power requested 84; site control or codename only 9; announced 501; stage not established 734; withdrawn, blocked or paused (filed projects) 72.
- Pipeline = stages 0 to 7, not terminal, not announced-only: 797 campuses.

## Power (MW), stated
Seven MW types are read from their own records and never added across types. Stated figures are never adjusted.
- Utility power contracted: 118 campuses report a figure.
- Utility power requested: 107 campuses report a figure.
- Critical IT load: 201 campuses report a figure.
- Total facility power: 46 campuses report a figure.
- Backup generator nameplate: 249 campuses report a figure.
- On-site prime generation: 33 campuses report a figure.
- Announced by the developer (a claim, not a filing): 296 campuses report a figure.

## Backed vs. announced (the third edition's finding)
- Cohort: 252 active campuses with a developer-announced size (218.1 GW announced, announced MW only). 44 withdrawn, blocked, cancelled or paused announcements are left out.
- Backed: at least one record kept by someone other than the developer shows contracted or requested utility power, a critical IT load, permitted generators or on-site generation, or proves stage 5 or later (permitted, under construction, partly energized, operating). Qualifying records: utility, regulator, permit, government and facility-inventory records, and SEC filings. An operator listing a facility as operating also qualifies. Press reports, an operator's statements about future capacity and land-use filings or approvals alone do not qualify.
- Of the unbacked, 44 have a land-use filing or approval (stage 3 or 4). 5 match an unnamed utility load request (PJM TEAC planning slides) by place, size or timing only; those matches are not counted as backing.
- Result: 123 backed; 129 not backed (115.1 GW announced). By announced size: Under 100 MW 34 of 60 not backed; 100–499 MW 41 of 97 not backed; 500–999 MW 16 of 32 not backed; 1 GW and up 38 of 63 not backed.
- Counting is by campus. Announced MW is summed only with announced MW; a backing record's MW is never netted against it.
- 'Not backed' means no qualifying record was found in public sources as of the data date. It is not a finding on whether the project gets built.

- Virginia backup-generator nameplate comes from Virginia DEQ air permits (linked per campus). The Piedmont Environmental Council's public transcription of those permits was used as a cross-check and, where our automated reading of a permit's tables double-counted, as the value; large figures were checked by hand. Engine (mechanical) kW is noted where a permit gives no electrical rating.

## Estimated critical IT load (estimate, kept apart from stated figures)
- Campuses with an estimate: 912, all without a stated critical IT load.
- Method: footprint square feet (Overture building footprints at the campus's record locations) x watts per square foot observed at operating campuses that state both critical IT load and footprint. Low, mid and high use the 25th percentile, median and 75th percentile.
- Colocation density: n = 85, p25 22.8, median 45.5, p75 83.3 W/SF.
- National density (used for hyperscale and other campuses, because too few hyperscale campuses publish both): n = 92, p25 19.6, median 45.5, p75 83.3 W/SF.
- Estimate totals: mid 10,586.6 MW; range 4,774.3 MW to 19,383.8 MW. Estimates are never added to stated figures.

## Local moratoriums
- 734 local instruments: enacted 470; extended 53; proposed 156; rejected 32; expired 13; lifted 5; replaced 5.
- Compiled from local government records and news. Each verified against its source article or ordinance: article confirmed 645; corrected 64; w15 web verified 21; primary confirmed 4. Headline-only reports were not published.
- Boundaries: Census 2023 counties, places and county subdivisions. County instruments apply only to unincorporated land unless they say otherwise. Campuses placed only at a town center are excluded from the test. A campus inside more than one instrument is counted once, under its most consequential reading.
- 272 published campuses inside an instrument in force: not established 59; operating, not affected 187; approved before the moratorium 14; may need an approval inside the moratorium 12.
- Statewide actions, listed apart: New York executive order of 2026-07-14 (up to one year; state environmental permits for hyperscale facilities of 50 MW and up); Texas directive pausing TCEQ permits from 2026-09-21; Oregon pause on state-land requests, 2026-09-08 to 2027-07-01.

## Publication tiers and audits
Audit 1: 100 campuses sampled across 9 evidence classes, each checked against Esri satellite imagery and its source records. Overall: 33 confirmed, 39 plausible (real record, imagery inconclusive, e.g. inside a multi-tenant building or bare land for a planned site), 14 not a data center, 13 unverifiable, 1 wrong place.

| Evidence class | Confirmed or plausible | Not a data center |
|---|---|---|
| Multi-source campuses | 88% | 0% |
| Operator, utility or incentive records | 100% | 0% |
| PeeringDB only | 92% | 8% |
| Water or stormwater permit only | 80% | 0% |
| OpenStreetMap only | 70% | 10% |
| Rezoning only | 70% | 30% |
| FAA filing only | 58% | 33% |
| Overture place name only | 50% | 33% |
| Air permit or ECHO only | 40% (50% unverifiable) | 10% |

The high-error classes (rezoning-only, FAA-only, Overture-only, air/ECHO-only) were held back from publication, then reviewed record by record.

Audit 2: 2,464 held campuses reviewed from their record text: 1,356 data center facilities, 576 not data centers, 115 data-center-related but not a facility (substations, ordinances), 417 unsure. A 40-campus imagery check of the promoted campuses found 20 of 20 high-confidence promotions confirmed or plausible, against 16 of 20 medium-confidence (1 not a data center, 1 point outside the US). Only high-confidence promotions are published.

Audit 3: imagery verification of 751 campuses still held: 211 data center visible, 241 plausible, 222 not a data center, 77 unverifiable. Visible campuses were published; plausible ones only when the record is a regulator's data-center filing.

## Geography
- State, county and metro come from each campus's coordinates. Metros are 2023 core-based statistical areas.

## Campus fields
- id, name, operator, operator_type, state, county, metro, lat, lng: campus identity and location. position = site (record location) or approximate (town center).
- stage, status: stage on the ladder above; status = withdrawn, blocked, cancelled, paused or moratorium where recorded.
- first_evidence_year: year of the first public record.
- mw_utility_power_contracted, mw_utility_power_requested, mw_critical_it_load, mw_total_facility_power, mw_backup_generator_nameplate, mw_on-site_prime_generation, mw_announced_by_developer: stated MW by type. Never add across columns. mw_announced_by_developer is the developer's claim.
- building_sf_footprint: Overture footprint square feet within the campus.
- buildings_at_record_locations: count of Overture buildings at the campus's record locations.
- estimated_critical_it_mw_mid: Moraine estimate (footprint x median density). An estimate, not a stated figure; blank where the campus states a critical IT load.
- estimated_critical_it_mw_range: low-high estimate (25th to 75th percentile density).
- announced_in_press_only: 1 when the project is known only from a press announcement, with no filing found.
- mw_figures_from_press_or_operator: MW types (uc, ur, it, tf, gn, op) whose shown figure comes from a press report or an operator statement rather than a utility, regulator, permit, government, inventory or SEC record; blank when none.
- backed_by_third_party_or_sec: backing record types, semicolon-separated (uc utility contracted, ur utility requested, it critical IT, gn permitted generators, op on-site generation, st permit-or-later stage); blank when none.
- source_types: evidence families present.

## Known gaps
- Some states offer no anonymous search of air permits; many local governments publish no searchable agendas. Early-stage projects there are undercounted.
- PJM's interconnection and large-load queue is not public without an account key.
- Projects reported only in the news carry the announced stage until a filing is found.

## Limits
Observed data only, except the estimated critical IT load, which is labeled and kept apart. No forecasts. No street addresses or personal names are published. Not investment advice.