Data Center Moratoriums

The US data center policy landscape at the end of August 2026 is defined by two statewide pauses — New York's Executive Order 62 moratorium on DEC permits for facilities of 50 MW or more, and Texas's effective freeze on new grid connections while the PUC and ERCOT audit roughly 200 GW of interconnection requests — layered over an accelerating wave of local restriction that now reaches every region of the country. New York's legislative track sharpened this week: on August 24, sixty members of the Assembly and Senate signed a letter urging Governor Hochul to sign the Responsible Data Center Development Act, which passed both chambers in June and reaches further than her executive order by covering facilities of 20 MW and up. Oregon's 2027 session is now set to open with dueling proposals, after Governor Kotek announced on August 24 that she will introduce her own data center bill incorporating her advisory committee's recommendations, alongside the three-year moratorium four Democratic legislators proposed earlier in the month. The most striking pattern of late August is the spread of outright municipal bans. New Jersey added four in a single week — Stafford Township, Jackson Township, North Brunswick and East Brunswick — bringing the count advocacy groups cite to roughly 38 municipalities that have blocked data centers by local ordinance, the most of any state. California's Coachella Valley consolidated into a restriction bloc: Coachella enacted a permanent citywide ban on August 25, joining Perris and Desert Hot Springs, while Palm Springs added a 45-day study moratorium the next day. Maine's Eastport Planning Board unanimously recommended a permanent all-districts ban. Alongside the bans, large-jurisdiction pauses keep arriving: Durham County, North Carolina adopted a nine-month moratorium on facilities over 100,000 square feet aligned with the city of Durham; the City of Elkhart, Indiana voted 9-0 to stop accepting applications until December 2027; Orangetown, New York paused new applications for six months; and Anniston and Westover, Alabama both adopted moratoriums on August 18. The counter-current is equally visible: jurisdictions are increasingly choosing regulation — or refusing to act at all — rather than pausing development. Henry County, Virginia adopted one of the strictest zoning frameworks yet on August 25, requiring rezoning plus a special use permit, 1,000-foot setbacks, a 50 dBA noise limit and closed-loop cooling. Tallahassee rejected a proposed AI data center ban 3-2, Davidson County, North Carolina voted down a six-month pause, Salix, Iowa rejected a moratorium 3-2 after Google was revealed as the developer, and Pulaski County, Arkansas — which rejected a moratorium in July — saw the final vote on its replacement regulatory ordinance delayed under an overflow crowd on August 25. Florida's Public Service Commission opened the first regulatory test of the state's new Hyperscale Data Center Act, reviewing whether Duke Energy's first large-load proposal adequately insulates ratepayers. Trends to watch: whether Governor Hochul signs the Responsible Data Center Development Act before her December 31 deadline; the outcome of Texas's ERCOT queue audit, which covers most of the nation's largest proposed load; the September votes queued in Spartanburg County, Loudoun County, Lubbock and Pulaski County; New Mexico's Supreme Court pause of air permitting for the 2.5 GW Project Jupiter; and whether the municipal-ban model spreading through New Jersey, Riverside County and coastal Maine begins appearing in the major hyperscale markets of the Southeast and Midwest, where county-level moratoriums — more than a third of Indiana counties and over 30 North Carolina jurisdictions — are already the norm.