More than 300 US local governments have voted to pause datacenters in the past 18 months, and the pace picked up sharply this summer. Most of them are buying time.

"A datacenter moratorium is a temporary legal pause, usually enacted by a local government. It halts approval, permitting, and construction of new datacenters. It doesn't affect existing datacenters."

"These can last anywhere from months to a year, and can often be revoked, replaced by new regulation, or extended."

"Many zoning codes were written before anyone was considering those huge 100-plus megawatt to multiple gigawatt facilities, so a pause buys time to write datacenter-specific rules and assess infrastructure needs. It's also a low-cost way for elected officials to answer local opposition."