Data Center Moratoriums

August 2026 was the month statewide action stopped being a New York story. On August 3 Texas Governor Greg Abbott directed the Public Utility Commission of Texas and ERCOT to conduct a comprehensive verification and audit of every data center advancing through ERCOT's interconnection queue, and ERCOT halted its 'batch zero' large-load transmission study in response. State officials say the review covers roughly 250 to 300 projects representing about 200 GW of requested demand — more than twice ERCOT's all-time peak — and will take several months, during which no data center can be approved for grid connection. Two weeks later, on August 18, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro signed Executive Order 2026-05, barring the Department of Environmental Protection from reviewing a data center permit unless the developer has made a legally binding commitment to new Governor's Responsible Infrastructure Development standards and has already secured local government approval; the order also removes AI data centers from the state's Fast Track program and prohibits nondisclosure agreements. Pennsylvania has roughly 100 pending proposals and has issued about five permits. Both governors acted by executive authority rather than legislation — the same route New York's Kathy Hochul took in July — and in all three states the legislature's own bill remains unfinished. New York's Responsible Data Center Development Act, passed by both chambers on June 4, still had not been signed as of late August. Cost allocation continued to advance through regulators rather than legislatures. Virginia's State Corporation Commission ruled on July 31 — in an order that drew attention in early August — that large-load data centers must pay for transmission facilities built solely to serve them, resolving a fight over roughly $1.5 billion in Dominion Energy spending and cutting the average residential monthly increase from about $2.90 to $0.94; Dominion has 90 days to file a new cost-assignment proposal. Oregon's Public Utility Commission is implementing the separate large-load rate class created by the 2025 POWER Act. Louisiana's Public Service Commission went the other way, voting 3-1 on August 13 to let Meta keep details of its Richland Parish facility confidential over an administrative law judge's subpoena. Meanwhile two more states lined up statewide pauses for 2027 sessions: four Oregon Democratic legislators announced a three-year moratorium bill on August 4, and New Mexico Democrats gave their own statewide moratorium proposal a first committee hearing on August 11, driven by the Oracle and OpenAI Project Jupiter campus in Doña Ana County. Local government remains the fastest-moving front, and the pauses are getting longer and reaching larger jurisdictions. Louisville Metro Council voted 24-1 on August 13 for a six-month moratorium; the Indianapolis City-County Council voted 23-1 on August 10 to bar new construction in Marion County through the end of 2027; Greensboro adopted a 180-day pause 8-0 on August 18 and Alamance County a one-year pause 5-0 on August 17, part of more than 30 North Carolina jurisdictions that have acted in 2026. Arkansas saw the longest pauses in the country: Independence County enacted a five-year moratorium on August 10 and Madison County a three-year moratorium on August 17, both unanimously and neither with a project pending. Outright bans also spread — Bayonne, New Jersey and Charlestown, Rhode Island prohibited data centers citywide in mid-August, Nye County, Nevada banned them in the Pahrump Valley 5-0 on August 19, and the Cherokee Nation barred hyperscale facilities from tribal and trust lands on August 10 after a survey found 64% of citizens opposed. Three things are worth watching. First, the preferred instrument is shifting from the pause to the permit condition: Tucson, Chesapeake, Bedford Township and Fort Worth all chose buffers, conditional-use requirements, groundwater bans and disclosure rules over moratoriums, and Sioux Falls' mayor explicitly rejected a pause in favor of guardrails. Second, legal risk is now shaping outcomes in both directions — Hill County, Texas rescinded its moratorium in June after a developer sued for more than $100 million, prompting Tom Green County to abandon its own effort, while Keller voted to sue neighboring Westlake and Grayslake, Illinois residents sued to void an $18 billion approval under the Open Meetings Act. Third, restriction has not slowed the buildout: Epoch AI's tracker now covers 83 facilities worldwide at about 13 GW of IT power, xAI's Colossus 2 reached roughly 1.28 GW and 1.1 million H100-equivalents in June, Vantage broke ground on the 1.4 GW Stargate campus in Shackelford County, and Effingham County, Georgia approved OpenAI's $20 billion Project Camellia on August 3 — the same week Texas froze its interconnection queue.