2026 09 15 Feed Semianalysis Everyone Says Datacenter Moratoriums

Summary

SemiAnalysis (Maya Barkin, September 15, paid; free portion filed) argues the "moratoriums are killing the US datacenter buildout" narrative is inaccurate. Their Datacenter Industry Model still forecasts +38 GW of US datacenter IT capacity in 2027 (22 GW under vertical construction). Parcel-level mapping of 400+ local instruments: of ~20 GW sitting inside a restricted boundary, only 1,525 MW is actually delayed (three projects: AWS Ohio, a Pennsylvania powered-land campus, Colorado). New York's order touches ~1.4 GW, of which ~0.8 GW is a meaningful delay. Combined genuine delay ~2.3 GW. Texas ERCOT queue pause is 3–4 months of admin delay for grid-tied baseload, offset by BtM acceleration (75 GW of firm BtM equipment orders, more bound for Texas than any other state). This is independent corroboration — and a quantified ceiling — on the existing siting-gate thesis, not a tenth AI-infrastructure chain.

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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.

But once again, the narrative is driven by widely spread misinformation. Today, we dive deep into the widespread narrative of moratoriums killing the US datacenter buildout. Once again, it's highly inaccurate. Our Datacenter Industry Model forecasts +38GW of Datacenter IT capacity delivered in the US in 2027, more than double that of 2026. Of that total, 22GW is under vertical construction, while the remaining 16GW "planned" is, in majority, already financed, doing siteworks and preparing for vertical construction.

Today, we estimate that roughly 2.3 GW of planned capacity is genuinely delayed because of local moratoriums and New York's executive order, the two categories of policy intervention for which we can establish a direct project-level impact.

• At the local level (i.e., cities, townships, counties), of the roughly 20 GW sitting inside a restricted boundary, only 1,525 MW is delayed. Three projects account for the delayed MW: an AWS campus in Ohio, a powered land developer campus in Pennsylvania, and a site in Colorado.
• New York's moratorium touches roughly 1.4 GW, but we estimate only about 0.8 GW faces a meaningful delay directly attributable to the order.

Texas adds perhaps three-four months of administrative delay for base-load projects in the ERCOT interconnection queue, but is offset by an acceleration of behind-the-meter demand. For projects that never needed the grid, it means nothing at all, making it a net positive for BtM developers and on-site generation suppliers. In June we showed BtM powering more than half of new US datacenter capacity from 2028. Last week we counted 75 GW of firm BtM equipment orders, more of them bound for Texas than any other state. If anything, the audit reinforces our view that the buildout is moving BtM.

The number of moratoriums is a poor proxy for the amount of MW capacity they actually affect. A recent Brownsville moratorium was brewing while Elon was planning a datacenter within city limits. Just days before approval, the city and Elon sneakily "deannexed" the 444 acres in Brownsville, bringing the project out of Brownsville's moratorium jurisdiction.

A moratorium only matters to our forecast if it applies to a specific project, covers the project's parcel, and blocks an approval that the developer still needs. Capacity already under construction, or fully permitted and about to start, is out of reach altogether, since these instruments freeze new applications rather than revoke approvals already granted. That covers all of 2026 and most of 2027.

To be 100% clear, we think moratoriums COULD delay the buildout, but they just aren't yet at scale.

Four main factors explain why hundreds of restrictions translate into relatively little actual delay:

• (1) county moratoriums often stop at city lines, leaving projects within incorporated municipalities unaffected;
• (2) moratoriums typically freeze new applications rather than revoke existing approvals, allowing entitled projects to proceed;
• (3) shorter moratoriums may expire before 2028+ projects need the affected approval; and
• (4) other issues, such as litigation or equipment lead times, may already be gating the schedule.

With the November 2026 elections approaching, moratoriums are an easy way for elected officials to demonstrate that they are responding to community concerns without permanently shutting down development. Both New York Governor Hochul and Texas Governor Abbott bypassed their legislatures to impose pauses they can ultimately control and revoke. More durable statewide restrictions remain much harder to enact: 13 bills died in 2026, with almost none reaching a floor vote.

A datacenter moratorium is a temporary legal pause, from a few months to a year. A moratorium is almost always a freeze on accepting new applications rather than a revocation of approvals already granted.

Moratorium-exposed MW is not necessarily the same as moratorium-delayed MW. If you miss just one of the binding-constraint filters, the moratorium is irrelevant. The cumulative effect: 300+ local instruments translate into just ~1,525 MW of actual project delay in the US.

NorthPoint's campus near Scranton, Pennsylvania, illustrates one of the rare cases where a moratorium actually binds: the site sits inside the township; the township adopted the resolution unanimously in June 2026; NorthPoint had not yet obtained the required special exception; first buildings were scheduled to start in Q4 2026; the restriction applies to the datacenter use itself. The moratorium delays the local entitlement process into 2027.

As of September 2026, more than 300 local datacenter moratoriums and bans have been adopted nationwide. The top four states (Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina, Georgia) account for roughly half of all local instruments nationally. Michigan has the highest ordinance count but effectively zero pipeline exposure — the Cannoli/Google campus sits on industrial land where data processing was already a permitted use.

Americans were net-positive on AI broadly, but significantly more negative on datacenters specifically: 46% of voters view datacenters unfavorably versus just 29% favorable. 46% would oppose a new datacenter in their own city or town.

In Ohio, Republican gubernatorial nominee Vivek Ramaswamy pledged in August that no new datacenter would be approved unless it eliminated electricity bills for nearby residents, paid full property taxes to fund homeowner relief, and met strict water and farmland protections.

Mapping every one of the roughly 300 local datacenter moratoriums and permanent bans currently active across the US against the pipeline, the direct impact is minimal. Only 1,525 MW is directly delayed, which is 7.6% of the capacity sitting inside a restricted boundary. Three projects account for essentially all of them.

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