Soaring demand for data centers is powering one of the largest infrastructure buildouts in U.S. history. Tech companies are spending hundreds of billions of dollars in the race to control the future of AI, creating boomtowns overnight while placing unprecedented demand on local electric grids.
A number of factors – availability of power, presence of high-capacity fiber-optic networks, tax incentives, and proximity to corporate customers – dictate where and how data centers are built. The scramble to build AI infrastructure has resulted in several well-known clusters of data centers in the U.S., such as “Data Center Alley” in Virginia, and many lesser-known pockets of computing infrastructure. In five counties, there are more than 30 known data centers per 100,000 residents. But while data centers offer the promise of economic development, they also threaten to strain power grids and hike utility bills. A closer look at the data reveals the counties with the highest concentrations of data centers.
To identify the counties with the highest concentrations of data centers, Climate Crisis 247 reviewed data on known data center locations from the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information. Counties were ranked based on the number of known data centers within their boundaries as of September 2025 per 100,000 residents. Supplemental data on the Power Stress Vulnerability Index are from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory…