Dylan PatelFounder and Chief Analyst, SemiAnalysis · The semiconductor-AI stack

More than 300 US local governments have voted to pause datacenters in the past 18 months, and the pa

19 Sept 2026 · 2 min

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In this segment, the hosts define a data center moratorium as a temporary legal pause—typically enacted by local governments, and occasionally by states—on the approval, permitting, and construction of new data centers, while leaving existing facilities untouched. They explain that moratoriums can last from a few months up to a year, may be revoked or extended, and are often used as a low‑cost political tool to address two main challenges: outdated zoning codes that were not designed for megawatt‑scale facilities, and rising local opposition to large data center projects. The discussion highlights a recent, rapid increase in moratorium activity across the United States: more than 300 towns, cities, and counties have voted to pause data center development in the past 18 months, with a noticeable peak in May–June 2024. State‑level actions, primarily through executive orders, have also emerged in New York, Texas, Pennsylvania, and Oregon. The segment underscores that these moratoriums are temporary freezes intended to buy time for updated regulations and infrastructure assessments, signaling a growing regulatory scrutiny of data center expansion.

Chapters

Could you take us through just a definition? What's a moratorium? It's kind of a politically charged topic that a lot of people are talking about right now.
Yeah. So a data center moratorium is essentially a temporary legal pause that's usually enacted by a local government. It can also be a state government, and it generally halts approval, permitting, and construction of new data centers. So almost everyone of these is a freeze on accepting new applications. So it doesn't affect existing data centers. And these can last anywhere from months to a year and can be often revoked or replaced by new regulation and can also be extended. We've seen that moratoriums in the US are overwhelmingly local. So at the county, city, township level, but we've also seen that state-level action has started over the This past summer, mostly through executive orders rather than legislation. And governments use them for, I would say, 2 main reasons. They use them because many zoning codes were written before anyone was considering those huge 100+ megawatts to the multiple gigawatt facilities that are being built. And so a pause buys time to write data center-specific rules and assess infrastructure needs. And it's also a quite low-cost way for elected officials to answer local opposition. We've all seen like in the headlines over the past year, especially in the summer, that US data center buildout, like it looked like it was coming under increasing pressure with one moratorium after another being announced, and then several states taking action, first New York, then Texas pausing the next step in the ERCOT interconnection queue. Then Pennsylvania and Oregon, which we touched upon in the article, also taking measures but stopping short from an actual moratorium. And yeah, also over the past year and a half, so it's a quite recent phenomenon, more than 300 towns, cities, local governments have voted to pause data centers, and there's been a sharp acceleration over the summer. With, as you can see in the chart in our article, a visible peak in May, June of this year.