The Scarcest Asset: Entitled, Powered Land
Everyone entering this business thinks the constraint is real estate. It isn't. Dirt is abundant; a parcel that is zoned to be built on and can actually draw hundreds of megawatts from the grid within a usable timeframe is not. That combination, land plus entitlement plus deliverable power, is the whole game. When you understand why those three rarely arrive together, you understand why campuses trade for extraordinary sums before a single server is racked. Faraday's read: master this one idea and the rest of site selection becomes arithmetic.
Knowledge check
Why is raw land rarely the binding constraint in data-center site selection?
Show the answer
Land is abundant and comparatively cheap; the binding constraint is whether a parcel is entitled (legally permitted to build the facility) and can secure deliverable power on a workable timeline. Those two conditions, not the dirt itself, are scarce.