Everyone Says Datacenter Moratoriums Are Killing the US Buildout. We disagree
The debate on US datacenters has never been so politically charged. Four states have acted in under two months. New York has stopped issuing environmental permits for datacenters, Texas has paused the next step in its massive ERCOT interconnection queue, Pennsylvania has pulled datacenters out of fast-track permitting and made state permits conditional on new guardrails, and Oregon has frozen datacenter deals on state-owned land. Beyond the state level, more than 300 towns, cities and counties have voted to halt datacenters over the past year and a half. If you read the news, the US datacenter buildout looks like it is being legislated to a halt, one government board at a time. As AI drives an unprecedented wave of datacenter construction over the last year, concerns over electricity costs, water consumption, land use, and community impacts are increasingly influencing policy. Source: SemiAnalysis Datacenter Industry Model , SemiAnalysis Moratoriums Tab But once again, the narrative
