Maine lawmaker Melanie Sachs, a Democrat, thought her state was one of the few places in the nation where data centers weren’t interested in setting up shop. The northeastern-most state in the US — known for its rocky coastline, lobsters and L.L. Bean boots — isn’t exactly Silicon Valley.
So when she sponsored a bill earlier this year that would put a temporary ban on new, large data centers, she figured it wouldn’t make a splash. It was only then that they learned about two data centers projects already proposed in different Maine communities.
“Once I put the bill in, they started coming out of the woodwork,” Sachs said. “The communities didn’t know anything about it at all. In rural communities, whether it’s Maine or somewhere else, local permitting for these projects is nonexistent.”
In the coming weeks, Maine could be the first state in the nation to pass a temporary moratorium on new data centers — giving it time to study how much electricity and water they use, and how they might impact jobs and the local economy. Similar temporary bans are being proposed in deeply red and blue states alike, including New York, South Carolina, Oklahoma and Vermont. And there are dozens of local bans at the county and municipal level, often in response to a new data center coming into a community.
Proponents say these bills are a response to an industry that has been strikingly fast-moving and secretive, providing little opportunity for substantive public input.
“It’s really a nonpartisan issue, and I think a lot of it just goes back to how rapidly things have been changing in recent years,” said South Carolina Rep. Steven Long, a Republican who cosponsored a moratorium proposal in his state. “The public policy hasn’t been able to keep up with it.”
As big tech companies and the Trump administration pursue an aggressive bid to make the US a leader in artificial intelligence, massive ‘hyperscale’ data centers needed to operate those technologies have proliferated. There are over 4,000 data centers around the US, according to the Data Center Map. Virginia has the largest data center cluster in the world, and there’s a proliferation in Texas and California as well.
As data centers expand their footprint, a groundswell of local opposition is following.
The Data Center Coalition, a trade group representing big tech companies and data center developers, said in a statement that the industry “provides significant benefits to states and local communities” in the form of local jobs, investment and tax revenue.
Maine’s bill was bipartisan — it passed the Democratically-controlled House with 6 Republican votes. The state Senate has yet to vote on the bill; Maine Gov. Janet Mills has indicated she will support it if it passes the legislature. One outstanding issue is whether lawmakers will carve out an exception to the ban for existing data centers — an amendment to do so failed to pass the House. Without it, those centers may not move forward.
The bill would keep a ban in effect until late 2027; enough time, Sachs hopes, for state energy and environmental regulators to design rules of the road for large data centers, which need vast amounts of energy to power artificial intelligence and other computing.
But such a ban could discourage future development and “send a signal that the state is closed for business,” said Dan Diorio, vice president of state policy at the Data Center Coalition.
“A state moratorium on data centers would discourage further investment, both from the data center industry and other advanced industries that depend on predictability and a welcoming business climate when making multibillion-dollar investments,” Diorio said.
Nationally, more than 140 local groups around the country have managed to block or delay more than $60 billion worth of investment in US data center projects in a little over a year, according to the nonpartisan research firm Data Center Watch. Some states and municipalities are passing measures that would put guardrails on how much electricity and waters data centers can use, how much they have to pay for that use, and how much information they must disclose to the communities they are in.
State lawmakers are reacting to the “speed, scale and secrecy” of many data center projects, said Jason Beckfield, a Harvard University sociology professor studying data centers. Developers are on highly compressed timelines of weeks and months. Often, projects can feel like they fall out of the sky, he said.
“There’s such a strong culture of secrecy around these things, it leaves regular community members and their elected representatives in a position where they can’t possibly hope to keep up,” Beckfield said.
This growing local opposition is a serious force to be reckoned with, Beckfield said, and is a significant roadblock along with factors like a lack of available electric power.
“It’s harder to buy public support [for data centers] than it is to buy a power plant,” Beckfield said.
In Maine and other states, concerns over data centers increasing electricity rates was a big motivating factor for moratorium bills, said Sachs and fellow Maine Democratic Rep. Amy Roeder.
“We’re getting killed by electric prices,” said Roeder, whose constituents are complaining of monthly power bills that are hundreds of dollars.
“To put a data center that’s going to use up a lot of resources in the middle of this just feels irresponsible,” she added. “I love the idea of us just hitting pause and taking our time and figuring it the hell out.”
