Data Center Moratorium Explained: Who Has One in 2026

What Is a Data Center Moratorium? A Pause, Not a Ban

A data center moratorium is a time-limited legal pause on accepting, reviewing or approving new data center projects, usually adopted by a city, county or state while officials study the impact and write permanent rules. Most rest on zoning or emergency powers, and most leave projects that already hold permits alone.

Four different tools get called a moratorium in headlines. They do different things.

What a moratorium actually pauses

Four details decide how much a given pause matters.

• What is frozen. Seattle froze the processing and approval of large projects. New York's order pauses discretionary state environmental permits and leaves local permits alone.
• The size threshold. Santa Fe County, New Mexico, set it at 1 MW. Seattle uses 20 MVA, which MyNorthwest reported is roughly the electricity use of 16,000 homes. New York's order starts at 50 MW. Maine's vetoed bill used 20 MW.
• The length. Six months for the Maine town measures, one year in Seattle, 18 months in Santa Fe County.
• What is already in the pipeline. New York exempts permit applications deemed complete before July 14, 2026, and carves out manufacturing, research, education and medical uses.

If a pause is proposed near you, the threshold and the expiry date tell you more than the headline does.

Many of these pauses are not aimed at a specific project at all. Santa Fe County had no data center proposal pending when its commissioners voted unanimously on June 30, 2026, and the ordinance also bars nondisclosure agreements on these projects, according to the county's announcement. Seattle's bill sponsor described the same gap.

"We didn't even have a definition of data centers in our zoning." (Eddie Lin, Seattle City Council member and bill sponsor, June 2026)

Who Has a Data Center Moratorium in 2026?

As of November 15, 2026, there is no federal moratorium, New York has a statewide pause created by executive order, and almost every other moratorium is local.

Federal: proposed, not moving

Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez announced the AI Data Center Moratorium Act on March 25, 2026. It would pause construction of new data centers until federal safeguards for workers, consumers and the environment are in place. The House version is H.R. 9442. The Associated Press reported that the bill is unlikely to advance and that most lawmakers of both parties have rejected the idea, with Senator John Fetterman opposing it over competition with China.

"We need a federal moratorium on AI data centers." (Bernie Sanders, U.S. Senator, Mar 25, 2026, quoted by the Associated Press)

State level: one executive order, one veto

• New York. Governor Kathy Hochul signed Executive Order 62 on July 14, 2026. It pauses discretionary state environmental permits for new hyperscale data centers of 50 MW or more until the state completes a Generic Environmental Impact Statement, which her office says will take up to a year. Local permits are not covered. The legislature had passed its own bill on June 4, 2026 (S10642/A11560), a one-year pause starting at 20 MW. According to a Davis Polk client update, the governor did not act on it and issued the order instead.
• Maine. The legislature passed LD 307, which would have paused applications for data centers above 20 MW until November 1, 2027. Governor Mills vetoed it on April 24, 2026, and the override failed on April 29. She signed a separate bill that bars data center projects from the state's business development tax incentives. The project she wanted to protect sits at the former Androscoggin paper mill in Jay.
• Texas and Ohio. Texas Governor Greg Abbott paused some approvals pending a grid audit in August 2026, and governor-elect Gina Hinojosa has promised a moratorium on approvals after she takes office on January 19, 2027. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine paused new tax-break applications on May 27, 2026. Our state-by-state data center guide tracks both.
• Other proposals. Data Center Watch counted statewide moratorium proposals in 14 states in the first quarter of 2026, from both parties.

"The final version of this bill fails to allow for a specific project in the Town of Jay that enjoys strong local support from its host community and region." (Janet Mills, Governor of Maine, Apr 24, 2026, on her LD 307 veto)

"New York will lead the way in creating the strongest standards in the nation for data center development." (Kathy Hochul, Governor of New York, Jul 14, 2026)

Local: where the action is

The Maine Wire reported on November 11 that eight Maine towns had voted to restrict data centers.

The November 3 votes

Ballotpedia counted 41 local data center measures on the November 3 ballot across ten states. In 40 of them the result favored limits. Twenty-seven measures that restrict data centers passed: 5 full bans, 12 partial bans, 3 six-month moratoriums (all in Maine), 2 zoning rules, 2 non-binding opposition measures, 2 voter-approval requirements and 1 financial-guarantee requirement. Another 13 measures that would have helped data centers failed. The single exception was Harwood, North Dakota, where voters rejected a review requirement. Six earlier measures in 2026 had all favored limits too.

Pew Research Center counted something slightly different. It says people in at least 38 jurisdictions voted in the 2026 midterms to limit or ban data centers. Trackers define a measure differently, so treat the totals as close cousins, not the same number.

How Many Projects Have Been Blocked? About $198 Billion in Six Months

Data Center Watch counted at least 120 data center projects worth about $198 billion blocked or delayed by local opposition in the first half of 2026. Its first-quarter report put the figure at at least 75 projects and about $130 billion, which it called the largest single-quarter concentration of blocked and delayed projects on record. The second quarter added at least 45 projects worth nearly $68 billion.

Two cautions apply. "Blocked or delayed" is wider than "cancelled," and the report pages do not explain how projects are counted or valued. FactSet, working from its own dataset, reads the pattern as timing risk: the rules are "largely time-limited pauses, not permanent bans," so the likelier outcome is slower, more expensive projects, not vanished ones.

Organized opposition grew just as fast. Data Center Watch's first-quarter report said active opposition groups had more than doubled since the end of 2025 and now span 49 states, and that more than 300 state data center bills were filed in the first six weeks of 2026. By the second quarter, 30 statehouses had introduced legislation, resolutions or executive actions.

The Number Most Guides Don't Show

Run the numbers and two things stand out.

The first is the clock. FactSet's November 12 analysis found that 81% of the moratoriums it tracks have a dated expiry between the fourth quarter of 2026 and the third quarter of 2027. By my arithmetic, a six-month pause voted on November 3, 2026 runs out around May 2, 2027. So the real contest in 2027 is not whether to pause. It is what each town writes into permanent rules before the pause ends or gets renewed.

The second is the size of what is being stopped. Dividing $198 billion by 120 projects gives about $1.65 billion per project. Because both counts are floors ("at least"), that is a rough ceiling on the average, but it still describes campus-scale builds, not server closets. That is why the size thresholds matter more than the word "moratorium": a 20 MW line catches an AI training campus and misses a hospital's server room.

Do Data Centers Create Jobs? About 50 Permanent Workers and 1,500 at the Peak

Data centers create a large number of temporary construction jobs and a small number of permanent ones. Virginia's legislative watchdog, JLARC, gave the clearest figures in its December 2024 report on the state with the most tracked data center buildings.

Source: JLARC, Data Centers in Virginia (Report 598), December 2024. The staffing figures come from data center company representatives interviewed by JLARC.

About 1,500 people build a facility that then employs about 50, a ratio of roughly 30 to 1, or closer to 60 to 1 if only the 25 or so direct employees count. That gap is the whole jobs argument in one line. JLARC contrasts one employee per 5,000 square feet at a data center with one per 650 square feet at some distribution centers.

Supporters weigh jobs more heavily than opponents do. In Gallup's April 2026 open-ended survey, 55% of people who favor a local AI data center named job opportunities as a reason, and 13% named tax revenue. A June 2026 Governing column by a former California planning commissioner argued the trade looks thin: Virginia's industry reported 1,610 new jobs in fiscal 2025 while receiving $1.9 billion in tax benefits, about $1.2 million per job. That is an opinion piece working from reported figures, so read it as one side of the argument. A moratorium vote is partly a vote on that ratio.

Why Communities Are Pushing Back, and What It Means for AI

Communities are pushing back over electricity bills, water, noise and land use, and the polling shows it is broad. Gallup's March 2026 poll found 71% of Americans oppose an AI data center in their area, including 48% who strongly oppose it, and only barely a quarter in favor. Opposition was 63% in the West, 68% in the East, 76% in the Midwest and 75% in the South. For comparison, 53% of respondents in the same poll opposed a nuclear plant nearby.

When Gallup asked opponents why, resource use led. About 18% each named water and energy use, and 16% named pollution, including noise.

Pew Research Center's tracking shows how fast views moved during 2026. Between January and August, the share of adults who said data centers are mostly bad for the environment rose from 39% to 54%, a 15-point swing in seven months. The share who said mostly bad for home energy costs rose from 38% to 50%. In a July 20 to August 9 survey, 60% were not too or not at all comfortable with a new data center in their area, including 68% of Democrats and 54% of Republicans. Pew also found that 42% of U.S. adults live within five miles of an existing or planned data center.

The electricity bill argument

The strongest numbers come from PJM, the grid operator covering Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and a dozen other states. Its independent market monitor, Monitoring Analytics, attributes $29.4 billion of capacity-market costs across the last four auctions to data center load, which Utility Dive reported is 46% of $63.6 billion in total charges. The most recent auction accounted for $6.3 billion, or 38% of $16.4 billion.

The monitor's Q3 2026 State of the Market report adds a per-megawatt-hour view. In the first nine months of 2026, the total cost of wholesale power in PJM rose $9.95, or 9.8%, from $101.66 to $111.61 per MWh because data center load was included in the capacity market. The report expects the December 2026 auction for the 2029/30 delivery year to add another $5 to $10 billion.

"There's only one way to do what hyperscalers agree is the right thing to do, and that is to run a separate auction." (Joseph Bowring, President, Monitoring Analytics, Jul 2026, to Utility Dive)

Those figures describe one region, and what a household pays depends on its state's rules about who covers new generation and grid upgrades. For how AI workloads turn into that demand, see AI data center power consumption. On the water and noise side, our guide to the environmental impact of AI data centers covers the evidence.

Why this lands hardest on AI builds

Pew counted more than 3,000 operating U.S. data centers as of February 2026 and at least 1,500 in development. Two-thirds of the planned ones are in rural areas, and 39% are in counties with no data center today. Those are the places least likely to have zoning language for something this size, which is exactly the gap Seattle's council member described. The campuses driving the pipeline are AI training and inference builds measured in tens or hundreds of megawatts, so a 20 MVA or 50 MW threshold catches them while leaving a small enterprise facility alone. That is my read of how the thresholds work, not a claim any of these governments has made.

Common Misconceptions About Data Center Moratoriums

People mix up pauses, votes and bills that do different things. Five mistakes come up most.

• A moratorium is not a ban. FactSet's reading of its dataset is explicit, and the numbers back it up: Ballotpedia found only 5 full bans among the 41 November 3 measures, against 3 six-month moratoriums and a mix of partial bans, zoning rules and approval requirements.
• Many states do not have one. New York's pause is an executive order, Maine's bill was vetoed, and the New York legislature's bill was left unsigned. Texas has paused some approvals pending a grid audit, which is a different instrument.
• A local vote does not always settle the question. Nine of the 41 November 3 measures were non-binding, and New York's order leaves local permits untouched, so a project can clear one level and stall at another.
• Opposition is not one party. Gallup found majorities of every party group opposed, and Pew found 54% of Republicans and 68% of Democrats uncomfortable with a new data center nearby.
• A pause does not mean cancelled. FactSet put it this way:

"These instruments are largely time-limited pauses, not permanent bans." (FactSet, Nov 12, 2026)

The industry's own position is that project-level rules work better than blanket pauses. The Data Center Coalition, the main trade group, opposed statewide pauses in Virginia and Oregon in 2026. It called one the wrong approach in Virginia and said another would signal that Oregon is closed for business, according to the Virginia Mercury and the Oregon Capital Chronicle. Supporters of pauses answer that the zoning rules do not exist yet.

What Happens Next: December Votes, a Grid Auction and the 2027 Renewals

The next ten months decide whether the pauses turn into permanent rules or lapse. Five dates matter.

• December 2026: three more local ballot measures, two in Clarksville, Arkansas and one in Mandan, North Dakota, according to Ballotpedia.
• December 2026: the PJM capacity auction for the 2029/30 delivery year, which the market monitor says will clear at the maximum price and add $5 to $10 billion in data center related costs.
• January 19, 2027: Gina Hinojosa takes office as governor of Texas, having promised a moratorium on data center approvals until the Legislature passes new protections.
• Around May 2027: six-month pauses voted on November 3 run out, inside the window where FactSet says 81% of tracked moratoriums expire.
• Around July 2027: New York's executive order is due to lapse up to a year after July 14, 2026, or sooner if the state finishes its environmental review first.

My read, which none of these sources states: moratoriums are buying time for rules that did not exist. The durable result is more likely to be size thresholds, pay-your-own-way grid tariffs and review requirements than a freeze. Developers will still build. They will build where the rules are written down.

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