Policy

The Supreme Court of Ohio ruled that a citizen-proposed data center zoning ordinance cannot appear on the November 3 general election ballot in Wilmington, Ohio. The court found that the ordinance improperly included a private right of action allowing residents to sue data center operators for zoning violations, which is beyond a municipality's constitutional authority to enact. The proposed measure, submitted by Quintin Koger Kidd and Susan Croutwater, would have set enforceable standards for noise, lighting, water use, heat generation, and airborne emissions, with fines of $5,000 or $10,000 per day and potential suspension of a data center's certificate of occupancy. The Clinton County Board of Elections had unanimously voted not to certify the initiative after Wilmington Law Director Desmond Cullimore cited the court's 2018 ruling in State ex rel. Bolzenius v. Preisse.

Governor Abigail Spanberger has signed an executive order creating the Data Center Accountability Framework, which her office describes as the most comprehensive and aggressive data center accountability effort in the United States. The order bans non-disclosure agreements for data center projects, calls for expedited development of noise regulations, and initiates a review of backup generators, particularly diesel-powered units, for their environmental impact on communities. The framework also directs creation of an AI task force to address workforce displacement, data privacy, and cybersecurity concerns, and establishes a planning and community engagement toolkit for local governments. Virginia joins New York and Texas, where governors have each separately moved to slow or pause data center development amid growing public concern over power and water consumption.

On September 21, 2026, Texas Governor Greg Abbott directed the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to halt issuance of all permits related to data center projects until ERCOT completes an audit of impacts on the state's electric grid and water resources. The pause covers permits for power generation, water rights, and wastewater infrastructure, and extends to projects outside ERCOT's footprint and below any megawatt threshold. Abbott also directed that no other state agency move forward with regulatory approvals for data centers until ERCOT receives requested information. ERCOT expects to publish findings from its State and Community Impact review no later than December 10, 2026, but no firm end date for the permitting pause has been set.

Pennsylvania's House Energy Committee advanced three bills on Wednesday aimed at preventing electricity customers from absorbing infrastructure costs tied to data center growth, after bills have risen by up to 20% two years in a row. House Bill 2828, introduced by Chairperson Elizabeth Fiedler (D-Philadelphia), would codify in state law that data center developers must pay for utility infrastructure upgrades needed to serve them, aligning with a Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission rate model issued in May. House Bill 2755, sponsored by Rep. Chris Pielli (D-Chester), would mandate investor-owned transmission companies join PJM Interconnection, eliminating a 0.5% profit bonus paid by customers; a similar move saved New Jersey ratepayers about $20 million a year. House Bill 2775, co-sponsored by Rep. Kyle Donahue (D-Lackawanna) and Fiedler, would require data center developers to apply for electric service and pay associated fees before seeking zoning approval, to filter out speculative projects.

Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) and Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Delaware) introduced two federal bills to increase transparency around large data center development and give communities independent information on potential impacts. The Data Center Community Empowerment Act would create a program at the U.S. Department of Energy to provide expert advice to state, local, and tribal governments on electricity demand, water use, economic impacts, and projected tax revenues, while explicitly barring the department from recommending project approvals. The Data Center Transparency Act would require the Environmental Protection Agency to report every three months on nationwide water consumption, reuse, water availability impacts, pollutant discharges, and greenhouse gas emissions, while the Energy Information Administration would report at least every six months on energy use and effects on household electricity bills. The bills were assigned to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, respectively.

Buckinghamshire Council has approved Amazon Web Services' plans for a data center project in Iver, Buckinghamshire, UK, replacing 17 existing industrial and warehouse units with a single two-story data center building spanning 30,525 sqm. As part of the approval, Amazon must contribute £600,382 toward air pollution offset projects, invest £73,000 in improving nearby public rights of way, and monitor generator emissions. Amazon Data Services originally filed for the project in October 2025, having purchased the site for £132.5 million in 2022.

An Coimisiún Pleanála has granted Google permission to build a third data center building at its Grange Castle Business Park campus in Dublin, Ireland, reversing a refusal issued by South Dublin County Council in August 2024. The council had originally denied permission over insufficient electricity grid capacity, a lack of significant on-site renewable energy, and unresolved Power Purchase Agreements. The approval is subject to conditions, including that Google show evidence of active power purchase agreements and use renewable fuel for backup generators.

The Grady County Board of Commissioners voted against pursuing either a county planning commission or a public vote on zoning authority that could have regulated data center development near Amber, Oklahoma. The decision followed the Amber Town Council's earlier rejection of annexation of nearly 3,000 acres, including land purchased by Aligned Data Centers (OK) Propco LLC on July 29 for over $17 million. Commissioner Ruth Bingham said several landowners near Amber had already voiced opposition to zoning laws, and Commissioner Zachary Davis cited private property rights as his rationale for opposing the measures.

Public Citizen has published a Texas Data Center Policy Guide aimed at helping community members identify, challenge, and regulate proposed data center projects in their area. The guide covers zoning authority, state environmental permitting, water rights allocations through groundwater conservation districts, and tax incentive programs including the Jobs, Energy, Technology, and Innovation Act and Tax Code Chapter 312 abatements. Public Citizen is also a founding member of the Texas Data Center Rebellion, a coalition of community activists organizing across the state.

The House passed H.R. 9340, the Ratepayer Protection Act, by a vote of 417-3 on September 16, sending the measure to the Senate Legislative Calendar as Calendar No. 684. The bill, introduced by Rep. Gabe Evans (R-CO) with Rep. Kathy Castor (D-FL) as original cosponsor, would amend the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 to establish a federal standard requiring large-load customers, defined as data center operators with an aggregate peak demand of at least 100 megawatts at a single site or campus, to bear the full incremental cost of grid upgrades needed to serve them. State utility regulators would generally have one year to begin considering the standard and two years to complete that review; the bill does not mandate adoption. The Congressional Budget Office estimated no federal budget impact, though it classified state compliance costs as an intergovernmental mandate it expects to be small.

A Saturday Seminar published by The Regulatory Review summarizes recent scholarship proposing frameworks to govern data centers' demands on electricity grids, water supplies, and local communities. The U.S. Department of Energy estimated data centers made up approximately 4.4 percent of U.S. electricity usage in 2023 and projects that share could reach between 6.7 percent and 12 percent by 2028. In June 2026, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission directed all six regional grid operators within its jurisdiction to justify or reform their rules for connecting large electricity users, while a July 2025 executive order, EO 14318, directed federal agencies to accelerate permitting for data centers. Scholars cited in the piece, drawn from institutions including the University of Michigan, UC Law San Francisco, MIT, and Harvard Law School, advocate for curtailment-based grid access, mandatory water use disclosure, limits on local preemption legislation, and scrutiny of secret utility contracts that may shift data center costs onto ordinary ratepayers.

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a package of seven data center bills into law on Monday, reversing his prior reluctance to regulate the industry. Three of the new laws shift electric infrastructure costs from residential customers to data center operators; three mandate disclosure of water usage and other resources; and one, Senate Bill 887, removes data centers from blanket environmental review exemptions while offering fast-tracked approval for facilities meeting state conservation standards. The Data Center Coalition, whose members include Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI, warned that further regulation could push the industry out of California, citing 665,500 jobs and more than $159 billion in economic activity generated by the sector in the state in 2024. Assemblymember Diane Papan, a San Mateo Democrat who authored two of the signed bills, said intensifying public backlash drove the legislation despite heavy lobbying from business interests.

The Columbia Borough Council in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania held a meeting Tuesday night to discuss proposed regulations governing data centers in light industrial and industrial zones, drawing approximately 40 to 50 residents. The session ran from 7 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. and covered roughly half of the proposed ordinance, with another meeting planned to continue gathering public input. Residents, including Taylor Enterline of Lancaster Stands Up, called for strict regulations on size, noise, power use, heat output, and environmental impact, while council members noted they cannot ban data centers entirely because exclusionary zoning is prohibited under Pennsylvania law. Any proposed rules are expected to come before the council in December.

Developer Energy Storage Solutions has withdrawn its $19.2 billion AI data center proposal in Edgecombe County, North Carolina, as confirmed by county manager Eric Evans at a July 6 board of commissioners meeting. The project, planned for the Kingsboro development area near Tarboro some 70 miles east of Raleigh, was described as a multi-phase campus potentially spanning 300 acres with a total capacity of 900MW. The county board had previously denied a special-use permit for an eight-phase 300MW campus on 52 acres, and an appeal from the developer remains ongoing. Commissioners also discussed a 24-month moratorium on new data center developments, with a public hearing scheduled for August.

Iranian drones struck two Amazon Web Services data centers in the United Arab Emirates on March 1, 2026, and a third AWS facility in Bahrain on April 1, in what Rest of World and other outlets described as the first known military strikes on a hyperscaler's infrastructure. The attacks, launched amid Iran's broader retaliation for U.S. and Israeli strikes on its territory, knocked out services for regional apps including the ride-hailing platform Careem and payment service Alaan, and the April strike on Bahrain's ME-SOUTH-1 facility, operated by telecom company Batelco and described as Amazon's largest Middle East data center, caused a fire, according to Bahrain's interior minister. Days later, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps named 18 U.S. companies, including Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, and Nvidia, as legitimate military targets in the region.

“Physical attacks are only going to become more common moving forward as AI becomes more significant,” Sam Winter-Levy of the Carnegie Endowment told Rest of World. IDC's Ashish Nadkarni described the shift more starkly: “Now suddenly, protecting data centers is like protecting top-security government offices.” The industry has historically built its defenses around cyberattacks and natural disasters; the drone strikes forced a reckoning with the idea that a data center could simply be bombed.

That reckoning has domestic roots too. On April 6, 2026, Indianapolis city-county councilman Ron Gibson said someone fired 13 shots into his home just after midnight while he and his 8-year-old son were inside; a note reading “No Data Centers” was left at the door. No one was injured, and police called it an isolated, targeted incident with the FBI assisting. Gibson had voted days earlier to support a rezoning petition for a Metrobloks data center project in his district. Jordyn Abrams, a research fellow at George Washington University's Program on Extremism, told the Associated Press that data centers have increasingly become a symbol for grievances spanning the political spectrum, citing energy and water consumption concerns and confidential utility power deals as recurring flashpoints.

Security researchers say the physical exposure compounds an already underappreciated vulnerability in data centers' operational technology. More than half of data center professionals identified human threats, internal or external, as their biggest security risk, according to a 2026 AFCOM survey cited by Bloomberg Law. Anthony Ferrante, global cybersecurity head at FTI Consulting, told Bloomberg Law that compromising the systems controlling cooling, fire suppression, and access control “could essentially shut down” a facility's computers entirely. Dave Wulf, co-founder of the Center for Cross-Sector Coordination, warned that a data center failure can cascade into banking, pipelines, hospitals, and defense systems that depend on it.

Congress has not settled on how to respond. The House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection has held hearings on whether data centers, or AI infrastructure more broadly, should become the 17th federally recognized critical infrastructure sector. “If a major data center is attacked, disrupted, or taken offline, the consequences can reach far beyond one company,” Rep. Andy Ogles said, arguing the current framework lacks a clear, unified approach. Industry witnesses split on the remedy: USTelecom's Robert Mayer and the Space Information Sharing and Analysis Center's Samuel Visner backed a standalone sector designation, following the United Kingdom's own move to designate data centers as critical infrastructure, while the IT-ISAC instead created a “special interest group” for data center providers rather than pushing for new federal machinery. The debate is complicated by capacity at the agency that would have to run it: CISA's headcount has fallen from roughly 3,300 to about 2,200 employees over the past year, including 96 of 189 people in its Stakeholder Engagement Division, according to a letter five House Democrats sent the Government Accountability Office asking it to investigate what capabilities were lost.

A year ago, data centers were mostly discussed in terms of power bills and zoning fights. Between a foreign government's drones, a councilman's front door, and a Congress still arguing over jurisdiction, the industry is now confronting a threat model it did not build for, and no clear consensus yet on who is responsible for closing the gap.

State Sen. Jim Runestad, chair of the Michigan Republican Party, introduced Senate Bills 1018 through 1020 alongside co-sponsor Sen. Ruth Johnson to pause all data center projects in Michigan for one year. The bills are framed as a temporary measure to gather information on potential electricity rate hikes, environmental harms, farmland loss, and other community impacts rather than a permanent ban. The legislation follows a groundbreaking ceremony Gov. Gretchen Whitmer attended for a large OpenAI-Oracle data center in Saline Township and mirrors a companion package introduced by three state House members. Both packages have been referred to government operations committees in their respective chambers, where legislation frequently stalls.

The Arkansas Public Service Commission has denied Entergy Arkansas' application for a 20-year power purchase agreement with Big Island Solar, a 440-megawatt solar facility being developed by Pattern Energy on 3,200 acres in Mississippi County. Commissioners ruled the agreement's cost was not reasonable or prudent and would not produce savings for retail customers compared to other generation options. The denial has direct implications for Google's $4 billion West Memphis data center, which is under a separate 20-year special rate contract with Entergy; Entergy had argued Big Island's renewable energy credits could help Google meet its pledge to power all data centers with carbon-free energy by 2030. The commission said it would reconsider if Entergy and Google reach an agreement on the renewable energy credits that addresses its concerns.

The Australian Government has announced a public consultation on proposed requirements for large data centres and conditions for AI training in Australia, opening at 6 am Australian Eastern Standard Time on 18 September 2026 and closing at 5 pm Australian Eastern Daylight Time on 9 October. The consultation covers energy use and renewable-energy requirements, sustainable water use, community engagement, project locations, infrastructure and community impacts, workforce skills and training, and thresholds for applying requirements to different types of data centres. Responses will be considered alongside targeted stakeholder engagement and work with Commonwealth, state, and territory governments. The resulting AI standards are intended to establish mandatory minimum requirements for large data centres while preserving state and territory responsibilities.

William Lawrence, the Democratic nominee for Michigan's Seventh Congressional District, released a policy plan called "Stop Tech Overreach" that calls for a federal moratorium on data center development, mandatory environmental protections around data center siting, safety requirements for new AI models, and a national AI compact. The plan also includes a national jobs program funded by a tax on AI industry profits to offset AI-driven employment disruption, as well as limits on AI use in K-12 schools and a ban on AI in decisionmaking roles at the Social Security Administration. Lawrence's opponent, Republican incumbent Rep. Tom Barrett of Charlotte, has introduced legislation barring AI from making medical necessity determinations and ensuring human oversight of AI-enabled weapons systems, but his campaign says Barrett opposes federal dictation of local land use and zoning decisions. The two candidates share concerns about AI's labor market impacts but diverge sharply on the federal government's role in regulating local data center development.

The Scottish Parliament passed amendments backed by the SNP and Labour that block planning decisions on new data centers over 50MW until updated national guidance is published, creating a de facto pause on approvals. SNP minister Hannah Mary Goodlad said full guidance would be released by the end of the year, while a Labour-backed motion requires the Scottish government to publish the guidance in full within 12 months. Separately, the Scottish government announced legislation requiring any developer of a hyperscale data center to conduct a full environmental impact assessment. The Scottish Green Party's motion for a formal moratorium was not passed, though its 50MW threshold shaped the final language approved by MSPs.

The U.S. House passed the Ratepayer Protection Act 417-3, a bill that would require state utility regulators to consider a standard making data centers with peak demand of at least 100 megawatts at a single site or campus pay the full cost of grid upgrades built to serve them. The measure also requires large data center customers to provide financial assurances before construction begins and holds them financially responsible for infrastructure costs if they later reduce or terminate their electricity contracts. Introduced by Reps. Gabe Evans (R-Colo.) and Kathy Castor (D-Fla.) in June, the bill passed the House Energy and Commerce Committee 52-0 in July before Wednesday's floor vote. A companion bill has been introduced in the Senate by Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio).

Community opposition, not power or land, has become the U.S. data center industry's central bottleneck in 2026. Data Center Watch, a project of AI intelligence firm 10a Labs, found that opponents blocked or delayed at least 75 projects worth about $130 billion in the first quarter of 2026 alone, the most in any quarter since the group began tracking in 2023. The number of active opposition groups more than doubled over the same stretch, from 396 at the end of 2025 to 833 across 49 states by March. Separately, Carbon Direct found that at least 46 AI data center projects worth $170 billion were publicly delayed or cancelled between January 2024 and May 2026, with a lack of transparency around ownership, power, and water needs the single most common cause. JLL's own research captures the underlying gap: 93% of communities agree data centers matter in the abstract, but only 35% support one built near them.

That gap is reshaping state and local law at a record pace. State lawmakers introduced at least 375 data center bills by mid-July 2026, according to The Washington Post, up from 243 in all of 2025, 75 in 2024, and 54 in 2023. Nine states have proposed statewide moratoriums, and 27 states are advancing “large load” legislation that requires developers to cover the cost of new energy infrastructure, with California, Ohio, and Utah already enacting versions of it. Seven major AI companies, including Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Oracle, signed a voluntary Ratepayer Protection Pledge with the White House in March 2026, committing to cover their own power and infrastructure costs, though the pledge carries no legal enforcement mechanism. As the Digest has reported, that legal uncertainty is also opening a new front in litigation: law firms including ArentFox Schiff, Davis Wright Tremaine, and Taft have built dedicated data center practice groups in 2026 as opposition groups increasingly challenge project approvals on procedural grounds rather than waiting on new legislation. The real friction now sits locally: state-level moratorium bills have faced resistance in statehouses, while dozens of municipalities have moved ahead with local construction pauses instead. New Hampshire is a case in point: Governor Kelly Ayotte says she will seek a multi-year statewide moratorium after the head of ISO New England told her a large data center would raise regional energy prices.

Across the Digest's own coverage and trade outlets including Data Center Dynamics and Data Center Frontier, the same idea keeps surfacing: trust, not physics, is now the binding constraint on growth. “The next constraint on data center growth, we thought it was going to be power, but it may be community acceptance and political durability,” Loudoun County Economic Development's Buddy Rizer said on a Data Center Frontier podcast, alongside PR strategist Adam Waitkunas of Milldam Public Relations. Some community opposition is genuinely merited; a lot of it stems from mistrust of unfamiliar corporate entities, a lack of basic information, or a project becoming a stand-in for broader anxiety about AI. Below are five moves each side can make to close that gap.

Five things developers can do

1. Lead with radical transparency on power, water, and ownership before site selection becomes public. Carbon Direct's research found that opaque ownership structures, NDAs with local officials, and undisclosed end users consistently triggered faster, sharper opposition; the firm recommends treating transparency as a siting strategy rather than a legal afterthought.
2. Negotiate real, enforceable Community Benefit Agreements, not PR gestures. As one CBA advocate wrote for Data Center Dynamics, a strong CBA “is not a public-relations gesture or a list of voluntary commitments”; it is a negotiated, enforceable partnership that defines responsibilities and impacts, giving developers predictability and communities tangible, long-term value.
3. Map opposition and engage stakeholders before acquiring a site. Identifying local advocacy groups, environmental organizations, and civic leaders early, before land is under contract, can prevent costly delays once a project becomes public.
4. Fund the infrastructure a community actually needs, not just tax revenue. Communities increasingly expect developers to pay for the power and water infrastructure their projects require; some operators have pledged to replenish more water than they consume or to fund local education and workforce programs.
5. Drop the NDA-heavy playbook with local officials. Confidentiality agreements that limit what elected officials can say publicly create a perception of secrecy that can poison a relationship before a developer has formally introduced itself, even when there are legitimate commercial reasons behind them.

Five things communities can do

1. Organize early and understand real negotiating leverage before a developer shows up. Communities that organize ahead of time can negotiate more effectively, aligning corporate needs with local priorities on things like workforce pipelines, rather than reacting only after a project is already announced.
2. Push for a formal Community Benefit Agreement process instead of ad hoc protest. A CBA process typically moves through public education, negotiation, and contract drafting, and once signed it obligates a developer to deliver specific, monitored commitments rather than vague promises.
3. Use zoning and permitting tools to shape projects rather than simply block them. Mason, Michigan is a working example: rather than an outright ban, its city council adopted a new zoning framework in February 2026 that tightened local rules on data centers after a contentious public meeting.
4. Demand transparency as a condition of engagement, not a courtesy. Since opaque disclosure of ownership, power, and water needs was the single most common reason cited across Carbon Direct's 46 delayed or cancelled projects, communities that insist on upfront disclosure are better positioned to evaluate real tradeoffs instead of relying on rumor.
5. Separate legitimate, project-specific concerns from generalized anti-AI sentiment. Distinguishing real site-specific harms, like a documented water or noise impact, from broader distrust or misinformation strengthens a community's credibility and its actual negotiating leverage with both developers and state regulators.

The throughline across nearly every source here is the same: both sides do better with a formal, enforceable Community Benefit Agreement negotiated early, before a site is acquired and before NDAs harden positions. Tax revenue alone is no longer enough to earn public support, and a blanket moratorium is not a substitute for the transparent, ongoing oversight that actually resolves these conflicts, which is exactly the middle ground a well-built CBA is designed to occupy.

The House passed the bipartisan Ratepayer Protection Act on September 16 by a 417-3 vote, a bill that would require electricity users drawing 100 megawatts or more at a single site to pay the full cost of any new power plants, transmission lines, or grid upgrades built to serve them. Introduced by Republican Representative Gabe Evans of Colorado and Democratic Representative Kathy Castor of Florida, the bill amends the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 but leaves final adoption decisions to state utility regulators rather than imposing a single federal rule. The legislation comes as the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimated US data centers consumed 176 terawatt-hours in 2023, with projected consumption rising to between 325 and 580 terawatt-hours by 2028. Several states, including Florida, Oregon, Virginia, Texas, Alabama, Nebraska, and South Dakota, have already adopted their own approaches to allocating large-load infrastructure costs.

Scottish politicians are preparing to vote on a national moratorium on data center development, a move that would make Scotland one of the first national-level jurisdictions to formally halt new construction. The vote follows mounting concerns about power grid strain and land use. No specific date for the vote has been confirmed, but the measure has sufficient parliamentary support to advance to a formal decision.

Virginia's congressional delegation is advancing federal legislation to regulate data centers, focusing on power demand, grid impact, and transparency requirements. The effort reflects bipartisan concern about the concentration of data center infrastructure in Northern Virginia, which hosts more capacity than any other market in the world. Specific bill details and sponsors were not fully disclosed in available reporting, but the push signals a shift toward federal rather than purely state-level oversight.

Vermont Governor Phil Scott vetoed state-level data center regulations, but one of his senior deputies has now urged Congress to pass equivalent rules at the federal level. The contradiction highlights the tension between state executives reluctant to impose local burdens on economic development and the broader need for consistent national standards. The deputy's congressional testimony positions Vermont as an unexpected voice for federal action on data center oversight.

SemiAnalysis catalogued more than 300 local moratoriums affecting data center development across the United States, producing what appears to be the first comprehensive geographic inventory of such restrictions. The analysis challenges assertions that moratoriums are primarily concentrated in a handful of high-profile markets, finding them distributed broadly across states including those considered friendly to buildout. The findings arrive as developers face compounding site-selection friction alongside power interconnection delays.

North Little Rock, Arkansas has approved new zoning regulations specifically governing where and how data centers can be built within the city. The regulations represent one of a growing number of local government actions aimed at managing the placement and operational standards of data center facilities. Specific provisions of the ordinance, including setback requirements or noise limits, were not detailed in available reporting.

Data Center Knowledge examined whether the European Union's forthcoming data center energy efficiency requirements could constrain the region's ambitions to build competitive AI infrastructure. The rules, which set targets for power usage effectiveness and other operational metrics, may conflict with the power-intensive demands of AI training and inference workloads. Industry groups have argued the requirements could drive hyperscale AI investment away from EU jurisdictions.

A Virginia congressman has proposed data center legislation that carries a significant financial penalty: states that do not comply with its provisions could lose federal highway funding. The bill would effectively use highway fund leverage, a mechanism historically reserved for issues like speed limits and drunk driving laws, to enforce data center policy at the state level. The specific compliance requirements and the dollar threshold for potential fund loss were detailed in a legal commentary analysis published this week.

A Board of Aldermen has passed formal zoning rules governing data center development, according to The Business Journals. Specific provisions, including setbacks, use classifications, or performance requirements, were not detailed in the available snippet. The action represents a legislative body formalizing local land-use authority over a sector that has largely operated under general commercial or industrial zoning.

The St. Louis Board of Aldermen approved a set of data center zoning regulations after months of debate, sending the measure to Mayor Tishaura Jones for signature. The rules establish formal land use requirements for data center development within the city. St. Louis joins a growing number of municipalities formalizing how and where data centers can be sited.

The Ascension Parish Zoning Commission in Louisiana has recommended the area's first formal data center regulations, marking a significant step toward structured oversight of facilities in the region. The proposed rules cover siting, operational standards, and compatibility with surrounding land uses, though the full commission vote is still pending. The recommendations will now move to parish government for final consideration and adoption.

UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham has rejected calls for a national moratorium on data center development, according to Data Center Dynamics. Burnham's decision keeps the door open for continued expansion across the UK even as community and environmental concerns mount in several regions. The ruling sets a national tone that local opposition groups will now have to confront without central government backing.

The Federation of American Scientists released a guide aimed at helping local governments develop better data center policy, covering zoning, permitting, tax incentives, utility coordination, and community benefit agreements. The document provides model frameworks that municipalities can adapt as data center development accelerates in smaller markets. It arrives as dozens of local governments across the United States are drafting or revising data center ordinances for the first time.

A new analysis published by Legis1 examines the scope and limits of congressional authority to regulate data centers at the federal level, covering commerce clause powers, preemption of state rules, and potential legislative frameworks. The piece arrives as multiple states including Massachusetts and New York have moved ahead with their own data center oversight regimes, creating a patchwork of requirements. Federal action, if pursued, could either harmonize those rules or conflict with existing state frameworks.

A Massachusetts order now requires data center developers to obtain local approval and enter into community benefit agreements before projects can proceed, according to Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly. The order formalizes a regulatory framework that gives municipalities direct leverage over siting decisions. Developers operating or planning facilities in the state must now navigate an additional approval layer beyond standard permitting.

Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey has tightened state data center regulations, requiring developers to secure local agreements before projects can proceed and adding explicit protections for electricity ratepayers. The new rules build on an earlier executive order and give municipalities direct leverage over siting decisions. Ratepayer protections are designed to prevent electricity costs from rising for residents as large data centers connect to the grid.

Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey has issued an executive order requiring proposed data centers to go through local approval processes before construction can begin. The directive shifts siting authority closer to municipalities, giving towns and cities formal review power over projects that previously moved through state-level permitting with limited local input. The order does not set a statewide moratorium but creates a structured review layer that developers must clear before breaking ground.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas has set a December 2026 deadline to finish its audit of data center load on the Texas grid. The review comes amid concern that rapid data center growth is straining ERCOT's capacity planning and load forecasting, particularly after earlier demand freeze announcements shook utility sector outlooks. The audit is expected to produce updated figures on how much power data centers are consuming and how that demand is projected to grow.