6.5 GW Under Construction, $98 Billion Stalled at the City Line

Texas is building toward 6.5 GW of datacenter capacity by 2030, but the pipeline can't outrun the politics. San Marcos killed a $1.5 billion facility at 2:14 a.m. after 182 citizens testified over aquifer fears, while grassroots groups nationally stalled $98 billion in projects in Q2 alone. The top five hyperscalers have committed $710 billion in 2026 capex into a market with 1% vacancy, yet grid connection timelines now average four years, and communities from Central Texas to small-town Kansas are discovering they'd rather say no than absorb unquantified water and power demands. That's a structural collision developers can't solve with capital alone.