Up to half of planned US data centers could face delays or cancellation. That’s not a chip analyst talking. It’s Ben Dell, managing partner of Kimmeridge Energy Management — a firm with direct stakes in US gas producers and Commonwealth LNG, a $13 billion Louisiana export terminal. Dell is, notably, warning against his own financial interests. That’s either admirably honest or a very sophisticated hedge. Either way, his argument deserves attention: “the sort of Silicon Valley model is running into a real-world infrastructure constraint.”
The binding constraint isn’t silicon. It’s zoning boards.
500 Jurisdictions, Zero Patience
Local bans are stacking up faster than server racks, and the opposition is no longer just coastal progressives.
- More than 500 US jurisdictions now ban or restrict new data centers; over 150 local bans passed in July alone across 42 states, according to reporting by The Information and Heatmap News.
- New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s Executive Order 62 freezes environmental permits for any data centre of 50 MW or more for a full year while regulators review impacts.
- Texas Governor Greg Abbott instructed state agencies to halt data center approvals pending audits of power and water demand — no fixed end date, no underlying statute yet.
- Dell describes the opposition as now bipartisan. Pennsylvania, Texas, and Ohio — once welcoming — are generating pushback and litigation heading into the midterms.
- Dell’s ideal proposal would have “zero impact” on water, land, emissions, and power prices. No such facility has been built yet, on either continent.
The gas demand math turns local permit fights into national consequences. Of roughly 30 billion cubic feet per day of expected US gas demand growth, data centres were supposed to account for 5–10 bcf/d. Delays push that toward the lower end. A county commissioner killing a permit in rural Ohio is, indirectly, revising a gas supply forecast.
That’s not an abstraction. That’s pipeline economics.
Gas That Doesn’t Burn in Ohio Gets Shipped to Rotterdam
Europe traded one fossil fuel dependency for another — and the data centre slowdown makes that exposure deeper, not shallower.
US LNG already supplies 57% of European LNG imports, according to IEEFA’s European LNG Tracker. IEEFA projects roughly two-thirds in 2026, and potentially 80% of EU LNG imports by 2028–2030. Dell’s Commonwealth LNG terminal — 9.5 million tonnes per annum, final investment decision taken in May — is scheduled to begin shipping around 2030. His logic is straightforward: gas that doesn’t power delayed data centres in the American midwest gets liquefied and exported instead.
Europe, meanwhile, is already building toward overcapacity. IEEFA projects US LNG export capacity reaching roughly 173 mtpa by 2030 — 76% higher than Europe’s forecasted LNG demand of 98 mtpa. Grid bottlenecks aren’t uniquely American, either. Nscale’s £2 billion data centre project in Essex reportedly couldn’t secure a National Grid connection in time to open next year, proving that even fully financed, permitted projects can stall on the transmission queue.
IEEFA analysts warn Europe risks a “new energy dependence,” with the US potentially supplying 75–80% of EU LNG imports by 2030.
Europe spent three years frantically escaping Russian gas dependency after Ukraine. The irony of potentially replacing that with 80% reliance on US LNG — while simultaneously demanding that big tech decarbonize its data infrastructure — is the kind of policy contradiction that doesn’t resolve itself quietly. The question isn’t whether something gives. It’s which side blinks first: the zoning boards or the hyperscalers.
