Kingsboro Data Center Project, Tarboro, North Carolina

Energy Storage Solutions had pitched a $19.2 billion, 900 megawatt data center for the Kingsboro area of Edgecombe County, near Tarboro, North Carolina, powered onsite by up to 1,800 megawatts of mostly natural gas turbines built for redundancy, president Dan Shaffer told commissioners. The company withdrew; County Manager Eric Evans told commissioners on July 6, 2026 that Energy Storage Solutions had backed out, and the board voted to return its deposit on the land. Shaffer said investors "insisted that we move forward with other projects that we have in friendlier communities" because of delays and opposition in Kingsboro and in Tarboro, where the town council had voted 6-1 in September 2025 to deny the company a permit for a separate data center.

Community organizer Janice Bulluck said: "When you come in, and you present this, then make it sound as though it's the best thing since sliced bread, when we start really looking into this, and it didn't even come close." Leggett resident James Wrenn compared it to the hog farms and slaughterhouses that once threatened the same land in the 1990s: "Data centers of the 2020s are like the hog farms and slaughterhouses of the 1990s, coming with the promise of much-needed funds for the county government while exposing the citizens of the surrounding community in Edgecombe County for serious environmental hazards." Residents raised air and noise pollution, water use and where the natural gas would come from, pointing to xAI's data center in Memphis, Tennessee, and its 35 unpermitted gas turbines.

On August 3, 2026, after a public hearing, five of Edgecombe County's seven commissioners voted for a two-year moratorium that bars the county from accepting, processing or approving data center development applications or permits until August 3, 2028.

Commissioner Donald Boswell, who was absent for that vote, had pushed back on the idea at the July 6 meeting: "I am a little tired of hearing that it's going to use all of our water or it's going to take all of our electricity and all the things that they've used since day one." He said he was not advocating for a data center, only against locking the county out of future options.