Wednesday, 1 July 2026

New York's Legislature passed a one-year moratorium on data center permits Thursday night, the latest pushback against a nationwide rush to build power-hungry facilities. If Governor Kathy Hochul signs the bill, New York would be the first state to enact such a freeze.

The pause covers any data center drawing peak energy use above 20 megawatts. Beyond that threshold, the Responsible Data Center Development Act mandates a local public hearing before construction and orders a statewide environmental impact report within a year and a half of the bill becoming law.

A similar push failed elsewhere in the region. Maine's governor vetoed a data center moratorium in April.

Inside New York, local governments moved first. Oneonta passed a 12-month moratorium on data center development last month under a measure drafted by town supervisor William Rivera.

Cost concerns have shadowed the debate. A USD 77 million subsidy for a data center near the state's border with New Jersey produced only a single permanent job, according to New York Focus, a state news outlet.

Microsoft is weighing an end to its round-the-clock clean energy goal, a target to supply 100 percent of its electricity use with zero-carbon power 100 percent of the time by 2030, according to Inside Climate News.

That review coincides with a gas buildout by Dominion Energy, the utility serving much of the data center load. Dominion's latest Integrated Resource Plan now calls for eight gigawatts of new natural gas capacity, up from an earlier request for six gigawatts of new gas generation tied to the surge in data center development.

Gas already anchors the utility's supply. In 2023, natural gas produced 36 percent of Dominion's electricity.

Dominion's record peak demand this past winter reached 25 gigawatts, a benchmark the new gas capacity would help serve.

Microsoft's target requires matching every hour of consumption at every facility with zero-carbon supply on the same grid, a stricter hourly standard than the annual matching used across most corporate procurement, according to Inside Climate News.