As the AI boom drives a historic expansion of data centers, a new survey suggests the industry’s biggest challenge is securing enough electricity to power this rapid growth.

Bloom Energy’s latest Data Center Power Report finds that access to electricity has emerged as the dominant site-selection factor. Bloom found that 84% of operators now identify power availability as the most important consideration when evaluating new locations.

The challenge has become significant enough that developers are now more often planning to generate electricity themselves. The survey found that 61% of developers would deploy onsite power systems if utility providers cannot deliver power on required timelines.

That shift is occurring at a pace few industry observers expected. Last year’s survey projected that only 13% of facilities would depend primarily on onsite generation by 2030. The latest survey now forecasts between 27% and 38% of data centers will rely on onsite power as their primary energy source by the end of the decade.

Even more dramatically, 27% of facilities are expected to operate entirely on self-generated power by 2030. In the previous survey, only 1% of operators anticipated fully onsite-powered facilities.

Environmental considerations are also becoming part of energy planning. Nearly one-third of facilities using onsite power generation are expected to incorporate carbon-capture technology by 2030.

AI Data Centers

The Bloom report projects that AI-focused facilities will account for a growing share of future capacity additions, increasing from 13% of new deployments in 2026 to 23% by 2030.

Demand is being driven largely by inference workloads. According to the report, inference now represents more than 50% of AI computing activity, demonstrating the shift from training models to running AI applications in production environments, and the adoption of agentic AI.

The scale of future projects is also getting larger. Bloom found that one in five data center campuses is expected to exceed one gigawatt of capacity by 2030. By 2035, that figure rises to one in three campuses.

Texas is becoming one of the industry’s most important markets. The report projects that data center-related electricity demand in the state could exceed 40 gigawatts by 2028.

Possibly slowing all of this growth: developers are encountering increasing resistance from local governments and residents concerned about resource consumption. Bloom reported that at least 18 state-level bills and 86 local moratorium proposals related to data center development had been introduced across the US as of May 2026. Respondents identified electricity prices, water usage and grid reliability as the issues most likely to influence community opposition to future projects.

Hardware Disconnect

The report also revealed a growing disconnect between data center development schedules and advances in AI hardware. Chip manufacturers expect high-density computing architectures and rack-level direct-current power systems to become mainstream in 2028. In contrast, data center developers do not expect to deploy those technologies until approximately one year later.

That timing gap could complicate future deployments as AI hardware requirements continue to escalate.

The survey was conducted in April 2026 and included 156 decision-makers across the data center ecosystem, including hyperscalers, colocation providers, chip developers and data center operators. Of those surveyed, 79% were based in the US.

Bottom line, the Bloom survey reveals a data center industry experiencing major growing pains, with challenges ranging from limits on power generation, hardware issues, and public scrutiny at greater levels than ever before.