Data Center Moratoriums Heat Up Across 20 States: Utility Stocks Face Revaluation
nashnova research
Of 36 gubernatorial races voting Tuesday, 20 now feature data-center moratorium or ban proposals — the collision between AI power demand and household electricity costs is forcing a full re-rating of utility valuations.
How big is this moratorium wave?
Bank of America counts roughly 80 state-level data-center bills now enacted or pending, up from a fringe issue in 2024. Local-level moratoriums, zoning restrictions, and ordinances have expanded to over 250.
Wells Fargo flagged in September that active local moratoriums had quadrupled. This means → approval headwinds are no longer isolated incidents but a nationwide political trend.
The trigger is electricity-bill inflation. Goldman Sachs notes that rising power costs, landing in a dense election cycle, have turned utility bills into a bread-and-butter voter issue.
Why is Texas the epicenter?
The state's interconnection queue stands at 474 GW, roughly 90% from data centers — more than five times Texas's all-time system peak. In plain terms = the data-center power waiting to plug into the grid dwarfs every record the state has ever set.
Governor Abbott pivoted in weeks: on August 3 he ordered audits of all in-queue data centers; the same day ERCOT froze approvals for loads of 75 MW and above. On September 21 he ordered a freeze on all data-center permits — air, wastewater, stormwater, and water rights.
This means → even data centers with their own on-site generation ("behind-the-meter power") cannot bypass the permit freeze. The market's prior assumption — "build your own plant and skip the grid" — is broken.
Bloomberg estimates roughly 50 GW, about 20% of the U.S. data-center pipeline, could be affected, with revenue impact reaching up to $8 billion by Q1 2027.
How do Georgia and Ohio differ?
In Georgia the key variable is not the governor but the Public Service Commission (PSC). Commissioners are elected; if Democrats win the two seats on Tuesday's ballot, they take control and can independently push data centers to bear infrastructure costs. This means → Southern Company's Georgia Power faces a direct valuation risk.
Ohio shows bipartisan consensus: the Democratic candidate demands data centers cover 100% of utility costs; the Republican candidate proposes a moratorium until legislation guarantees several conditions, including free electricity for residents near data centers. Of 35 local data-center measures nationwide on Tuesday, Ohio accounts for 21.
In plain terms = regardless of who wins, development costs in these states are heading up — the only question is by how much.
Will moratoriums kill the data-center investment cycle?
Bank of America's base case: most moratoriums are more likely to slow the marginal pace of construction and raise development costs than to end the broader investment cycle outright.
This reflects a capital-reallocation logic — post-election capital is expected to shift toward states with clearer regulatory frameworks, such as Wyoming, Minnesota, and Iowa. Morgan Stanley data shows roughly 60 GW of data-center capacity sits in key election states, with Texas alone at about 24 GW.
Capacity is heavily concentrated in a handful of states. This means → the market cannot price this theme with a single national narrative; state-level policy divergence is becoming the core variable driving valuation dispersion.
After the election, which dates matter most?
November 9: Texas legislative pre-filing opens, offering the first read on the legal trajectory of the moratorium.
December 10: ERCOT's deadline for 204 projects (totaling 66.4 GW of conditional base load) and 158 projects (totaling 127.9 GW of study load) to complete verification audits — though ERCOT has signaled possible delays.
Q1–Q2 2027: Final megawatt allocations are expected to surface. In plain terms = that is when the market will finally see whether utilities in policy-reset states can sustain their current valuation premiums.
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