Goldman Sachs: U.S. data centre growth remains untouched despite political opposition

Goldman Sachs assesses that the growing political and community opposition to data centres in the United States has had a limited short-term impact on their rapid expansion, as Reuters reports, citing a report by the investment bank published on Sunday.

According to Reuters’ reporting, Goldman has raised its forecast for U.S. data centre capacity for the end of 2026 by 5 gigawatts, to 64 gigawatts, while it has lowered by 5 gigawatts its forecast for the end of 2027, to 90 gigawatts.

Data centres, which provide the computing power for training and running artificial intelligence models, have met opposition in communities across the country because of their demand for electricity, utility costs and other local impacts. “While U.S. data centre development faces growing political and community opposition, project data and our updated capacity estimates suggest that the growth outlook through 2027 remains largely unchanged,” Goldman stresses.

The bank forecasts that U.S. data centres’ power demand will grow by 38 per cent, or 12 gigawatts, in 2026 and by another 38 per cent, or 17 gigawatts, in 2027. Meanwhile, a Reuters/Ipsos poll in June showed that only a third of Americans approve of the pace of data centre construction, and only 14 per cent would support a data centre in their community for artificial intelligence projects of companies such as Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and Elon Musk’s xAI.

“Public sentiment has also become more negative,” Goldman adds, warning that this opposition poses a political challenge for Republicans ahead of the midterm elections on 3 November.