Data centers have moved into rural America. So have the concerns

Data center construction is shifting dramatically toward rural America, with 67% of planned facilities targeting rural communities versus only 10% of existing centres. Rural residents express significantly higher concerns about electricity costs, farmland use, and water consumption than urban counterparts, as energy demand for data centres is projected to more than double in Illinois and triple across the upper Midwest by 2030. If you build power, water or land-use software for rural counties, you now have 1,500 data centre projects arriving over the next three to five years - and residents are already organized around the electricity and water questions your software could solve. The zoning and grid capacity problem is real enough that it's become electoral; solve it and you're selling to counties that want these projects but need to prove they can manage them.