Proposals to build gigantic data centers in Georgia are arriving so fast that it can be hard to keep up with them. This year alone has seen at least 10 multi-million-square-foot projects added to the list to serve the growing demands of AI.
In the first week of January, Amazon Web Services took the lead by announcing plans to spend at least $11 billion on new data center capacity in Butts and Douglas counties in metro Atlanta – a project said to be at the time the biggest corporate investment in Georgia history.
But that record would soon be broken. Earlier this month, T5 Data Centers said it intends to build a 1.2-gigawatt campus on an undisclosed site in Georgia at a cost of at least $16 billion. This would be in addition to others already in operation or planned in the state.
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That record, too, would fall when two weeks later, as Prologis confirmed to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that it was under contract to build a $17 billion data center named Project Sail on an 831-acre site in Coweta County. “Atlanta has always been a good market, but in the last couple of years, it’s become a great market," JC Witt, senior vice president of data center investments for Prologis, told the paper.
The industrial REIT has been expanding into data centers for some time and now plans to invest $8 billion in U.S. data centers over the next five years—a move that will add 3.4 GWs of total power capacity. The company also controls 15,000 acres of development-ready land.
Atlanta led all primary markets for net absorption in 2024 with 705.8 MW, well above perennial leader Northern Virginia, which held 451.7 MW. This was the first time any market surpassed Northern Virginia in annual net absorption, according to CBRE’s North America data center trends report.
Dgtl Infra, a company focused on the digital infrastructure industry, ranks Atlanta fourth among the top 10 data center locations in the country, with 1,065 MW capacity. Northern Virginia leads the nation with 3,945, followed by Phoenix (1,380) and Dallas (1,125).
According to CBRE, Atlanta had its highest volume of colocation leasing activity ever in 2024, emphasizing the growing demand for data center space in the surrounding region. Many of the multi-tenant data centers currently under construction in Atlanta have been preleased or reserved by single-tenant users, CBRE further noted.
However, while industry may be reveling in all the computing power due to come online, many of the communities affected by the land and resources required to operate massive data centers are in an uproar and fighting back.
Among their concerns are the enormous energy and cooling water requirements needed to operate the facilities. The state’s largest utility, Georgia Power, holds considerable sway in the state legislature, and customers worry that their rates will go up if the company passes along the additional costs of supplying power to the data centers. A new rule adopted by regulators aims to protect ratepayers from cost shifting and requires data centers themselves to cover the associated costs of power generation.
Residents also worry about the impact the data centers will have on their communities. They are making their voices heard. Two counties, Coweta and Douglas, have imposed moratoriums on all new data center projects and companies’ rezoning requests until their implications for communities have been determined.
Legislators in both the Georgia House and Senate have also responded to public pressure by passing a bill to suspend tax breaks granted to data centers. The non-profit organization Good Jobs First has calculated that Georgia will lose $296 million in 2025 because of state and local sales tax exemptions. However, the bill was vetoed by the Governor.
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