Will New York’s Data Center Moratorium Actually Stop Anything?

We have our first state-level data center moratorium.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul has paused data center development in the state for one year, signing an executive order on Tuesday that prevents the state from approving permits for new large-scale computing facilities.

The order targets what Hochul called “hyperscale data centers,” which she defined as those that can consume 50 megawatts of electricity or more.

“New York will lead the way in creating the strongest standards in the nation for data center development, ensuring that when companies succeed because of New York, New Yorkers succeed too,” the governor said.

The state will spend the next year finalizing a program to make sure data centers either build their own power generation or pay a higher rate for electricity. It will also help local governments negotiate “community benefits” with data center developers, and it will require projects to complete a more stringent form of environmental review.

Practically speaking, the moratorium doesn’t affect many projects, Heatmap Pro data suggests. Of the eight large-scale data center projects recently proposed in New York state, three have already been canceled, and one was approved last year. The developer behind a potentially million-acre campus — which would have consumed as much as 1,000 megawatts of power — in the upper Hudson Valley canceled the project last month after the town imposed its own moratorium.

In fact, most of the towns or counties where an AI data center would be most attractive in New York have already banned or restricted the projects in some way, our data shows. Eight municipalities in New York have banned data center development outright, while three have passed a restrictive ordinance of some kind.

If anything, the new moratorium is more lenient than developers might have expected. Last month, the New York state legislature passed a bill that would have blocked approvals for data centers larger than 20 megawatts for a year. Hochul is sidestepping that legislation by issuing this executive order.

Perhaps the most important context: Hochul faces a re-election campaign this fall. The order reminds me of when she paused New York City’s congestion pricing program just before it would have gone into effect in June 2024 — which was, if I may be blunt, another election year. I was sharply critical of her decision then and considered it among the worst climate policy betrayals of the Biden era; everything I’ve learned since suggests that the tolling plan really was in peril. But lo, several months later — a few weeks into November, as it happens — Hochul and state lawmakers revived the scheme. The policy finally began in 2025 and has been a roaring success.

To be clear, I don’t think Hochul will reverse this one-year moratorium in December. But I suspect that it’s unlikely to get extended beyond its initial 12 months, in part because so many towns and cities have already passed their own restrictions. (Or perhaps that makes its eventual extension more likely.) Whether other Democratic-run states follow her lead, though — especially those where more data centers are likely to get built — is another question.