Sterling Data Center, Sterling, Colorado

Granite Renewables, a New York company, wants to build a data center campus on about 4,000 acres roughly 21 miles northwest of Sterling, in Logan County, Colorado. It says the project could need up to 2,000 megawatts of electricity, at an estimated cost of $15 billion. The two nearest power plants are wind farms, Peetz Table Wind Energy and Logan Wind Energy, a combined 401 megawatts about 15 to 19 kilometers away, a fifth of what the project alone could draw. The region's grid authority, the Western Area Power Administration's Rocky Mountain region, serves a peak load of about 3,362 megawatts today across its entire territory, so this one project could need close to 60% of that again.

County officials say they did not know about the project until Granite Renewables began meeting with them in September 2025. The following month, Logan County commissioners imposed a moratorium on new data centers, battery storage, solar and wind projects while they wrote rules for how to site them. "You have to understand, this is all new to us," Commissioner Jim Yahn said. "You don't want to look back 10 years down the road and have regrets because we did something in haste."

The county's new rules, Resolution 2026-5, took effect on February 17, 2026, and cover any data center facility of one megawatt or larger. Applicants must map the site, submit a wildlife impact plan for review by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Colorado Parks and Wildlife, notify property owners within a mile of the project, and carry liability insurance covering construction and operation. In December 2025, commissioners separately approved an agreement with the Sterling Urban Renewal Authority allowing tax-increment financing to help pay for infrastructure tied to the project.

Andrew Fritzer, who chairs the county's economic development board, called the project a "once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform the local economy." The board's executive director, Trae Miller, said the moratorium itself sent "a negative message to the market." Granite Renewables says the project could create up to 1,000 construction jobs and 50 to 100 permanent technical and management positions.

The site sits about 1.2 miles from the South Platte River, the area's main water source. The river is already the subject of disputes over its allocation. Commissioners have also raised concerns about the project's proximity to Minuteman missile silos in the area, and the farmland the campus would take out of production.

Colorado Governor Jared Polis has said he wants to streamline permitting for energy projects, which critics worry could weaken local governments' say over where projects like this get built. "One of the reasons we can't have nice things is we don't let them be built," Polis said.

As of the most recent reporting found, Granite Renewables had not filed a formal application for the project.