NextEra and Brookfield Target $100B Data Center Campus in Kentucky
The proposal signals developers are routing around mounting local resistance in traditional hubs like Virginia.
NextEra Energy and Brookfield are planning to develop a $100 billion data center campus in Kentucky, according to people familiar with the matter.1 The project would rank among the largest ever proposed in the U.S., roughly matching the scale of the now-abandoned Prince William Digital Gateway in Virginia.4 Developers are routing around mounting local opposition in traditional hubs rather than fighting it.
Blackstone-owned QTS Realty Trust formally withdrew its appeal to the Virginia Supreme Court on July 2, ending a three-year legal battle over the Prince William site.4 Co-developer Compass Datacenters, backed by Brookfield, dropped its own appeal in April.4 At full build-out, the 2,100-acre campus carried an estimated $100 billion price tag and was meant to be the world's largest data center complex.4
The retreat came after the Prince William Board of County Supervisors spent nearly $2 million in taxpayer funds defending the project's original approval, then withdrew from litigation in April.4 Local resistance is not isolated. In the first quarter of 2026 alone, at least 75 data center projects worth $130 billion were disrupted by community opposition, according to Data Center Watch, a research project run by the AI firm 10a Labs.5
A Gallup survey released in May found 71% of Americans oppose data center construction in their area, with 48% strongly opposed — a higher resistance rate than for local nuclear plants.4 The Kentucky campus, still in early planning, targets a state with lower land costs, less organized opposition and political leaders eager for tax revenue.
NextEra's involvement is instructive. The Florida-based utility agreed on May 18 to acquire Dominion Energy in an all-stock deal valued at nearly $67 billion, creating the largest regulated electric utility in the world with a combined market capitalization of $249 billion.1 Dominion’s stock surged over 9% on the news while NextEra shares dipped over 4%.1 Analysts framed the merger as an AI story, but some characterized it more accurately as a competence story — NextEra buying an underperforming utility with strategic load-growth exposure.3
Virginia remains central to NextEra's thinking even as the Prince William project collapsed. QTS, while abandoning that campus, pointed to $5 billion in ongoing investment in the Richmond region on top of its existing Northern Virginia footprint.4 Blackstone raised $1.75 billion taking its data center acquisition vehicle public on the NYSE in May, signaling it still wants to buy already-leased assets.4 The firm still manages a portfolio worth more than $150 billion globally.4
The shift westward echoes what is happening in other states. In Wisconsin, regulators are considering two new gas plants to serve hyperscale data centers, including a Microsoft campus and a Vantage project leased to OpenAI and Oracle.6 In North Carolina, a proposed data center in the town of Walnut Cove has triggered a political firestorm.5 In Indiana, a community in Jasper County is being pulled between the promise of data center jobs and the reality of coal-plant extensions.2
All of which points to the central tension for power traders: new load is real, but the path to serving it is filling with friction. The Kentucky campus, if it clears local hurdles, will take years to consume meaningful power. The Wisconsin plants, if approved, still face a review process that critics say is stacked to approve projects before genuine public-need analysis occurs.6 Maria Chavez, a senior energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in an email that by the time a utility must demonstrate public need, “there's already a gas plant set for construction."6
The next signal is whether Kentucky's regulatory and community review follows Virginia's pattern or breaks it. Blackstone has swapped the Virginia campus for a $3.5 billion cash-and-stock deal giving Digital Realty full ownership of three built-and-leased Northern Virginia data centers valued at $7.8 billion.4 That trade — empty land for revenue-generating assets — may end up being the industry's real playbook for the next two years.