Pew Research Center Finds More Data Centers Coming to Rural Areas

(Data Center stock photo courtesy Christina Morillo via pexels)

In a shift from the past, most planned data centers in the U.S. are in rural areas, new research from the Pew Research Center found.

There are approximately 3,000 operational data centers nationwide and more than 1,500 new data centers in various stages of development nationwide, Pew said. More than two-thirds–67%–of these planned data centers will be located in rural areas, down significantly from the current situation, in which 87% of existing data centers are in urban areas.

In fact, the research said 39% of data centers in the planning stage are in counties that currently have no data centers.

“Most of the planned construction of U.S. data centers will happen in the South and Midwest,” Pew Research Center Computational Social Science Assistants Skyler Seets and Kaitlyn Radde said in the report. “Three-quarters of all planned data centers will be built in these two regions, with the South alone accounting for nearly half of them (48%).”

The report said Virginia and Texas currently have the most planned data centers with 287 and 170, respectively, followed by Georgia with 141, Illinois with 123 and Arizona with 86.

Virginia and Texas also have the most currently operating data centers (398 and 296, respectively). They are followed by California (277), Ohio (166) and New York (148).