States mull data‑center moratoriums

Maine lawmakers have moved closest to a statewide pause on new data centers, advancing a bill that would block permits for big projects until November 1, 2027. (cnn.com) (legislature.maine.gov) The Maine proposal, LD 307, would apply to new data centers with a load of 20 megawatts and would bar municipalities, state agencies and quasi-independent entities from accepting or issuing approvals during the pause. It also creates a Maine Data Center Coordination Council inside the Department of Energy Resources. (maine.gov) (legislature.maine.gov) The Maine House backed the measure 82-62 on April 7, with bipartisan support, after the Energy, Utilities and Technology Committee had already advanced it. Maine Public reported developers said the bill could kill plans for a 300-megawatt project in Sanford. (maine.gov) (mainepublic.org) A data center is a warehouse of servers that stores and moves digital information, and the newest artificial intelligence facilities can draw power on the scale of a small city. Maine’s bill directs the new council to examine grid reliability, electric-load growth, infrastructure needs, environmental impacts and ratepayer protections before recommending rules. (stateline.org) (legislature.maine.gov) The Maine fight is part of a wider shift in statehouses this year. The National Conference of State Legislatures said lawmakers in at least 11 states had introduced temporary moratorium bills by mid-March, while MultiState counted more than 300 data-center-related bills filed across 30-plus states in the first six weeks of 2026. (ncsl.org) (multistate.us) The proposals are not all the same. New York’s Senate bill S9144 would impose a statewide moratorium on permits for new data centers and order regulators to limit effects on electricity and gas rates, while Vermont’s S.205 would pause new artificial intelligence data centers until July 1, 2030 while regulators study the issue. (nysenate.gov) (legislature.vermont.gov) Virginia took a different path. House Bill 1515 would have blocked local approvals for new data centers until pending electric interconnection requests were cleared or July 1, 2028, but the bill was continued to 2027 in committee on February 6. (lis.virginia.gov) Georgia and Oklahoma also saw moratorium pushes tied to local land use and utility strain. In Georgia, House Bill 1012 proposed a pause until March 1, 2027, and in Oklahoma, Senate Bill 1488 proposed a moratorium until November 1, 2029 while the Corporation Commission studies effects on water, utility rates and property values. (gpb.org) (oksenate.gov) Industry groups say states should not freeze projects outright. The Data Center Coalition told Georgia Public Broadcasting that data centers “pay their full cost of service for the energy they use,” while supporters of pauses argue states wrote tax breaks and permitting rules before the scale of artificial-intelligence demand became clear. (gpb.org) (stateline.org) No state had enacted a moratorium as of mid-March, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, but Maine has moved the idea from a local zoning fight to a statewide test case. The next question is whether lawmakers treat big-compute projects like ordinary development, or as a new class of power-hungry infrastructure that needs its own rules. (ncsl.org) (cnn.com)