Data-centre bans top 500 as New York and Texas join the pushback

The tally crossed a symbolic line this week. The Information counts more than 500 US jurisdictions now banning or restricting new data centres, with over 150 local bans passed in July alone. A separate review by Heatmap News puts the number of restrictive local laws above 530 across 42 states, nearly 190 of them since 1 June.

Heatmap also counts more than 50 cancelled data centres so far this year, over double the 2025 pace. In contested cases, roughly 71% of proposals were scrapped in Michigan and 56% in Indiana. “The rates are accelerating,” said Peter Freed, a former Meta energy strategy director now at Near Horizon Group.

From zoning fights to statewide chokepoints

What changed this summer is that states joined in. On 14 July, New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed Executive Order 62. It freezes environmental permits for any data centre of 50 megawatts or more for a year. That made New York the first state to pull the lever itself.

Texas followed with a softer move. Governor Greg Abbott told state agencies to halt approvals pending audits of power and water demand. There is no fixed end date and no law behind it yet. Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller called the directive “all hat and no cattle” and pushed for a special legislative session.

Washington is pulling the other way. President Trump has called data centres bigger than oil and signed orders to fast-track them. A federal accelerator is now running straight into local brakes.

Why the mood turned

The anger is broad. A Gallup poll cited by CNN found 71% of Americans oppose data centres in their area. Residents point to grid load, water draw, noise and land use. The issue crosses party lines, and it is reshaping local politics in red and blue states alike.

One project shows why. Amazon is backing a gas plant in Pecos County, Texas, to power one campus off the grid. Permits allow up to 7.65 gigawatts and 33 million tons of carbon dioxide a year. That would make it the most polluting plant in the country. Amazon says it “won’t raise electricity costs for Texas families.” The New York Times reported its scale.

Bans are not even the biggest hurdle

Two cautions here. New York’s order is a hard permit freeze, while Texas’s is an open-ended audit. Many other measures are setback, noise or water rules that developers can design around. Industry groups such as the Maryland Tech Council argue the fears are “misunderstood or vastly overstated” and warn against foreclosing a generational opportunity.

The buildout was already slowing for duller reasons. Goldman Sachs expects only about half of the AI capacity due by 2028 to arrive on time. JPMorgan says 60% of capacity planned for 2027 has not broken ground. Materials, transformers, chips and labour are all short. Bans add friction, but permits were the tighter bottleneck before them.

That is the deeper shift the numbers point to. The scarce input is turning from compute and power contracts into welcoming ground to build on. It is a warning to hyperscalers, and to labs like Anthropic that pitch themselves as the responsible option. Scale stops being a moat the moment no one will let you pour the concrete.