Data center site selection criteria: the eleven that decide, ranked

What we offer at this stage

Read the parcel before anyone knows you are looking.

Site Favorability screen: sample deliverable mock-up — DeliverableSite Favorability screenParcel read with flagged conditions

Before an option is signed

Site Favorability screen. What is next door, who owns it, which approval path applies, what the utility and the neighbors just did. No project attached, nobody tipped off.

How the screen works →

Local Sentiment Index: sample deliverable mock-up — DeliverableLocal Sentiment IndexScore, band, loudness, scope, veto point

Once a project is public

Local Sentiment Index. A 0 to 100 score for a named project in a named market. Same rubric everywhere, so sites can be compared, and re-scored weekly once the project is public.

Score your market

Run the screen on all twenty parcels and the index on the three that survive. The first parcel review is free.

Data center site selection criteria, ranked

Ordered by how often each one kills a site. Ten have a number. One has a memo.

#	Criterion & what it decides	How it is measured
1	Power availability & interconnectionWhether the site is buildable at all, and when.	MW at the serving bus, queue position, years to energize
2	Utility willingness & large-load tariffsWhether the utility will actually take the load, and on what terms.	Tariff terms, minimum-demand commitment, collateral
3	Community sentiment & permitting riskWhether the project survives the approval process it has to pass through.	No standard measure
4	Fiber & network latencyNow a qualifier rather than a differentiator.	Route diversity count, milliseconds to market
5	Climate & cooling economicsDesign and a large share of operating cost.	Wet-bulb temperature, free-cooling hours
6	Water access & rightsCooling design, and in dry regions the project itself.	Gallons per day, permit status, legal right
7	Land: cost, topography, contiguityPhasing, developable area after setbacks.	Acres, slope, geotechnical borings
8	Natural-disaster & climate exposureInsurability across a 20 to 30 year operating life.	Flood zone, seismic class, wildfire index
9	Tax incentives & abatementsReal money, but it cannot fix an unpowerable site.	Abatement schedule, effective rate
10	Workforce availabilityThe binding constraint during construction.	Trade labor pool, competing megaprojects
11	Zoning & entitlement pathThe most fixable constraint, and the slowest.	By-right vs. rezoning, months to entitle

Ordering adapted from a published 2026 site selection framework. Positions vary by developer and market; the tiers hold.

Memos do not sort

Every other criterion produces a figure you can set beside the same figure from another site. Community risk produces a paragraph, and it carries the weight a paragraph carries next to a spreadsheet, right up until it is the only thing that matters.

Land is optioned under NDA so opposition cannot organize early. Then residents learn about the project from a rezoning notice, and the first thing they know about the developer is that it did not want them to know. The useful moment to read a community is before the option is signed, when what you learn can still change which parcel you buy.

Eleven criteria decide where a data center gets built.Ten of them have a number.

What we offer at this stage

Data center site selection criteria, ranked

The cost of finding out late

Memos do not sort

Next in the process

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