Mapping Data Center Moratoriums for Site Selection
The race to build artificial intelligence infrastructure and hyperscale cloud capacity has run headfirst into a rapidly shifting regulatory wall. Over the last two years, local municipalities, county boards, and state lawmakers across the United States have increasingly turned to a blunt policy instrument to slow down development: the data center moratorium.
For data center developers, power originators, and site selection teams, navigating this patchwork of temporary bans, zoning freezes, and legislative pauses has become one of the biggest bottlenecks in project origination. Relying on outdated zoning maps or discovering a pending freeze months after engaging landowners can sink millions of dollars in due diligence and engineering costs.
To bring clarity to a fragmented landscape, LandGate has launched a new Data Center Moratorium map layer. By tracking more than 700 data center moratoria nationwide, this spatial dataset gives site selection teams instant visibility into regulatory roadblocks before they commit capital to a parcel.
The Rise of Data Center Moratoria
A data center moratorium is a temporary pause on new data center permits, rezonings, or construction approvals, usually adopted so a local or state government can study impacts on the grid, water supply, and ratepayers, or write new zoning rules. Most moratoriums run 6 to 12 months, though many get extended and some are open-ended.
Data center moratoriums started as isolated community pushback in hyperscale hubs like Northern Virginia, where residents in Loudoun and Prince William counties fought new campuses over noise, transmission lines, and the loss of rural land. Those fights were local, and they were tied to one market that had absorbed more data center growth than anywhere else in the world.
That has changed. As AI-driven demand pushed developers into new regions, opposition followed. By August 2026, most states had at least one city or county that had moved to pause new data center construction. State legislatures got involved too: 14 states considered statewide moratorium bills this year, Maine's legislature passed the first one in April (later vetoed), and New York enacted a one-year pause on facilities over 20 MW.
According to LandGate’s data, the top five states with the highest concentration of data center moratoriums as of November 2026 are:
Michigan: 64 moratoria
North Carolina: 50 moratoria
Georgia: 44 moratoria
Florida: 39 moratoria
California: 36 moratoria
Several of these are core growth markets. Georgia has been one of the fastest-growing data center regions in the Southeast, and North Carolina and Michigan have been courting hyperscale investment with tax incentives. As a result, townships and counties are struggling to keep their comprehensive land-use plans aligned with the sheer scale of modern 100MW+ campuses. A 6 to 12-month pause might seem brief on paper, but in a competitive market where speed-to-power dictates project viability, a single moratorium can derail a hyperscaler’s deployment timeline. Or worse, become permanent once new restrictive ordinances are drafted.
The 2026 Midterms: Data Centers Were on the Ballot
The 2026 midterm elections cemented data center regulation as a potent statewide and national political issue. Many Democratic candidates campaigned on reining in data centers, focusing on electricity costs, water use, and tax subsidies. Democrats won control of both the House and the Senate, and data centers were one of the most prominent local issues of the cycle.
Key results of the democratic wave that matter for data center developers:
Local voters said no, decisively. Voters in 10 states decided 41 local data center ballot measures, and all but one went against data center development, many by margins of 70% or more. Ohio alone had 21 measures, every one of which went against data centers.
Texas is the biggest wildcard. Democrat Gina Hinojosa defeated Gov. Greg Abbott after promising a moratorium on new data center approvals. That puts Texas - one of the country's largest data center growth markets - in question.
Expect more of the same in 2027: new local moratoriums, extensions of existing ones, and state-level policy such as mandatory ratepayer protections, limits on NDAs, and rollbacks of tax incentives. LandGate and KPMG discussed how the election results could play out and what that means for developers in our recent AI Won’t Slow Down: Where Data Centers Get Built After the Midterms webinar.
Mapping Data Center Moratoriums with LandGate
LandGate's new Data Center Moratorium data layer puts every tracked moratorium on the map alongside its power, land, and infrastructure data. Instead of treating moratoriums as a simple yes-or-no binary, LandGate categorizes each one by status:
Active: Currently enacted bans or freezes prohibiting new data center applications, rezonings, or permits.
Proposed: Pending legislation, council resolutions, or public calls for a pause that signal imminent regulatory risk.
Expired: Previous moratoriums whose time limits have lapsed - often signaling areas that recently updated their zoning codes and may now have clear, albeit stricter, rules of engagement.
Withdrawn: Proposals that were pulled before a final vote, indicating past community or political friction that developers should still factor into community outreach.
Denied: Moratorium proposals that were formally voted down, highlighting jurisdictions where local leadership has actively rejected bans in favor of development.
Until now, tracking every municipal council agenda, county ordinance, and state-level proposal across thousands of jurisdictions required teams of analysts manually scouring local news and public records. By the time a moratorium made headlines, site selection teams had often already spent months negotiating options with landowners.
Get Detailed Context for Each Moratorium
By clicking on any moratorium boundary on LandGate’s map, you can see more details:
Name & Jurisdiction: Identifies whether the restriction applies to a specific city/town, county, or statewide boundary (e.g., New data-center development across New Mexico).
Current Status: Clearly displays whether the action is Active, Proposed, Expired, Withdrawn, or Denied.
Detailed Description: Summarizes the exact scope of the pause, the lawmakers or governing bodies behind it, and the specific conditions required to lift it - such as grid impact studies, water usage rules, or renewable energy mandates.
Duration: Shows the timeline or expiration window of the freeze, helping teams distinguish between a short 6-month zoning review and an indefinite halt.
Direct Source Link: Provides a direct URL to the underlying legislation, municipal notice, or news report so your legal and permitting teams can verify primary documentation in seconds.
For example, clicking on New Mexico shows a proposed statewide pause: U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández called for halting new data center development until projects meet requirements related to electricity costs, water use, renewable energy, community impacts, and taxpayer subsidies. It isn't enacted, but it's exactly the kind of early signal that should shape where you spend diligence dollars.
How to Use Moratorium Data in Site Selection
The true power of LandGate’s Data Center Moratorium layer lies in combining it with our comprehensive suite of parcel, energy, and infrastructure datasets. On a single platform, data center site selection teams can:
Screen Out High-Risk Jurisdictions Immediately: Overlay Active and Proposed moratoriums against your target search areas to avoid wasting time on locked-up counties.
Identify Adjacent Opportunity Zones: Spot parcels just across county lines or inside jurisdictions where moratoriums were Denied or Expired, giving you a first-mover advantage in vetted markets.
Track the Competition: Overlay existing and proposed data center sites to see where developers are clustering, and where a moratorium may be a reaction to that clustering.
Evaluate Behind-the-Meter Viability: Cross-reference moratorium maps with LandGate’s substation capacity, transmission lines, natural gas pipelines, fiber routes, and solar/wind resource layers to pinpoint ideal sites for co-located, behind-the-meter power generation.
Contact Landowners Directly: Once you identify an unencumbered parcel with strong power and fiber fundamentals, access verified ownership data and environmental constraints to originate off-market deals faster than the competition.
The Bottom Line
The data center moratorium is now a permanent feature of the U.S. development landscape. The midterms didn't create this trend, but they confirmed it and gave it more political momentum heading into 2027. Developers who map moratorium risk early will avoid stranded diligence spend, find the markets that are still open, and move faster on the sites that can actually get built.
LandGate brings data center moratorium maps, power infrastructure, and parcel-level land data together in one platform, so you can see policy risk next to the sites you're evaluating.
