US data center moratoriums

Where we stand

This year, US opposition to new data centers moved from local meetings to orders from state governments. On July 14, New York's governor signed Executive Order 62. The order tells the state's Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to put on hold all discretionary permit applications to build or expand a data center that it has not yet found complete. The hold lasts until the state finishes a statewide generic environmental impact statement on data centers and submits its report. The order covers only state permits, not local ones. It applies to facilities that use, or can use, 50 megawatts or more, and exempts facilities used mainly for manufacturing, research, education or medical care (NY Executive Order 62). The order's preamble says nearly 12 gigawatts of data-center power requests are waiting in line to connect to New York's grid (a gigawatt, or GW, is a billion watts, about the output of one large nuclear reactor) (same order). The governor's press release calls it a pause of up to one year that ends once the state finalizes new standards (governor's press release). How much capacity do these orders actually hold up? SemiAnalysis, a research firm that tracks US data centers, checked projects one by one on September 15 and estimated that local moratoriums and New York are genuinely delaying about 2.3 GW of planned capacity nationwide (SemiAnalysis). Our September 24 deep dive pointed out that this figure counts only projects that stay put and slow down; projects that are withdrawn or relocated count as zero (September 24 deep dive). The number keeps growing. On October 15, investor Kevin Xu said the US moratoriums he tracks had passed 400, most of them pauses that expire within a year. That figure comes from a dashboard he built himself, a single source, and we have not checked it item by item (our October 16 issue). Our current reading: most moratoriums are pauses with an end date, and the ones governors sign are executive orders that the next governor can revoke. What most candidates across the states want is for data centers to supply their own power and pay the full cost, not an outright ban. For most developers that means an added cost and a slower schedule, not a locked door, and developers that can generate power on site actually gain (September 19 deep dive). That is our synthesis of the state order, SemiAnalysis and a policy tracker's analysis. It has not yet passed our review as a formal insight, so treat it as a hypothesis.

Next reading to watch: when New York's statewide review finishes and the pause lifts, and how many of the pauses expiring during 2027 are renewed or turned into outright bans.

What we have published on it

• Oct 16, 2026 · Daily briefInvestor Kevin Xu says the US data-center moratoriums he tracks now number more than 400, most of them pauses that expire within a year
• Sep 24, 2026 · Deep diveUS data-center moratoriums have delayed only about 2.3GW, a count that omits cancelled and relocated projects
• Sep 19, 2026 · Deep diveData-center opposition reached the US election, and it lands on governors' executive orders. Most candidates want data centers to bring their own power, not a building ban
• Sep 16, 2026 · Daily briefCounted project by project, hundreds of US moratoriums delay about 2.3GW. That yardstick captures projects that slowed down, not projects that stayed away
• Jul 18, 2026 · Daily briefThe other two layers of governance also moved the same week: China took AI governance multilateral, and New York hit pause on data centers.