Maryland Under Pressure as Local Moratoriums Supercharge Opposition to Data Centers

More than 60 advocacy groups from across Maryland are urging leaders in Annapolis to put a temporary pause on new data center proposals until their impacts on the environment and communities can be fully understood and policies are in place to address any harms.

The move comes after 14 of 24 local jurisdictions in Maryland recently moved on their own to impose temporary bans on data center development. The patchwork of local actions, advocates argue, reflects the need for a coherent state policy governing these power-hungry server farms.

Pushback against data centers has gained national momentum since the federal effort to get ahead in the global AI race led to higher utility bills, and caused states and communities to demand that tech companies pay for their energy needs. The Maryland legislature passed a bill in its last session commissioning a study of data centers’ impact on air, water, the Chesapeake Bay watershed and the electricity grid. 

The analysis was jointly done by the Maryland Department of the Environment, the Maryland Energy Administration and the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. The Department of Legislative Services is responsible for coordinating and submitting the final report, which was due Sept. 1, to the governor and General Assembly. 

In an Aug. 27 letter, the environmental groups said the scale and speed of data center development have outpaced governments’ ability to evaluate their impacts and devise guardrails. They argued that in the absence of adequate safeguards, “communities and ratepayers are being asked to absorb risks before clear standards are established.”

Between 2020 and 2025, the letter said, energy bills for residential ratepayers have gone up by 44 percent, which they attribute in large part to data centers’ demand. The rapid development could also threaten Maryland’s watersheds, advocates argue, through enormous water withdrawal and possible chemical contamination, in addition to further burdening Black, brown and Indigenous communities that are often located closer to industrial facilities.

The letter came roughly two months before the general election in which Gov. Wes Moore will face Republican challenger Dan Cox, who has supported a statewide ban on hyperscale data centers. The vote is followed by the General Assembly session, and advocates are putting their demands on the map ahead of time, hoping leaders in Annapolis will take note.

Jomar Lloyd, Maryland organizer for Food & Water Watch, an advocacy group pushing for the state moratorium and a signatory to the letter, said Maryland lacks a comprehensive approach toward the data center issue. “The majority of counties still do not have adequate protections, and it’s also burdensome to local officials to shoulder the responsibility of crafting rules and regulations for an industry that is ramming its way into underprepared and unwilling communities,” Lloyd said in emailed comments. 

He said data centers’ tax exemptions, grid upgrades and water usage are some of the costs households are already seeing on their bills, but acknowledged that data centers are not the sole reason for higher energy bills. But he noted that in 2024 alone Maryland paid $108 million for data center-related transmission costs. 

Kim Coble, executive director of the Maryland League of Conservation Voters, recalled the stalled Republican-led bill, HB 120, which called for a statewide data center moratorium but died in committee during the 2026 legislative session. The bill failed, she said, because of industry pushback, and because it advocated for gas and nuclear, which “created a fracture in the conservation community.”

“It’s also burdensome to local officials to shoulder the responsibility of crafting rules and regulations for an industry that is ramming its way into underprepared and unwilling communities.”

— Jomar Lloyd, Food & Water Watch

Coble said she expects 2027 to look different. Opposition has grown in Maryland and nationally, and rising electricity costs have made residents skeptical of hosting the industry at all. Legislation next session, she said, will need to focus on pausing construction until key questions are resolved including water use and quality, energy sourcing, transmission, community benefits and siting.

“I think a statewide approach would serve the state better, but if the administration and members of the General Assembly can’t make progress on this, then the counties have every right to act on their own,” she said. The risk now is that projects could migrate to counties without restrictions, which “speaks to the need for statewide leadership.”

The two advocates disagreed on whether Annapolis is dealing with the issue. Coble said the connection between data centers, electric bills and affordability is well understood in the state legislature. “The legislature is absolutely connecting the dots between data centers and affordability,” she said. “In fact, affordability is the root of every bill in front of the legislature.” The link is one of the primary drivers of opposition to data centers and the other is siting, she said. “No one wants a data center near them.” 

Lloyd, however, said legislators grasp the issue but won’t say so publicly. Food & Water Watch has talked with some members of the General Assembly informally, he said, but none have responded to the letter, and neither has the governor’s office. “It’s really unfortunate to see that lawmakers aren’t meeting the moment by speaking out on this issue in a public-facing way, especially when residents have been so outspoken in their opposition.”

Moore believes data center developers, not Maryland ratepayers, should bear their projects’ power costs, spokesperson Rhyan Lake said in a statement. Proposed facilities should also hire local workers, contribute to economic growth, engage local communities and protect the environment. And no data center should proceed without local support, Lake said.

The administration will review the forthcoming Data Center Impact Analysis Report, Lake’s statement said. Moore has already warned against allowing data centers to “write their own rules,” as he says they have in Northern Virginia, while shifting costs to customers across the region.

Lake said Moore has also pressed for governance reforms at the regional transmission organization PJM and greater transparency and accountability to ratepayers. The governor recently signed the Utility RELIEF Act, which is intended to lower utility bills, modernize the state’s power grid and require large companies, including data centers, to pay for infrastructure upgrades driven by their projects. But he has yet to call for a statewide moratorium as his opponent, Cox, has.

The latest Data Center Watch report for January through March 2026 found at least 75 data center projects worth nearly $130 billion were blocked or delayed nationwide by a growing local opposition, matching in scale all of 2025 in just three months. 

“The number of active opposition groups has more than doubled since the end of Q4 2025, now spanning 49 states,” the report said, noting that 14 states proposed statewide moratoria with bipartisan support. 

“[A] moratorium can buy time, but it does not solve the underlying problem,” said Yueming “Lucy” Qiu, a professor and the Roy F. Weston Chair in Natural Economics at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy.

She said a pause can prevent some costs if it comes before infrastructure investments are locked in and “can also give regulators time to improve their load forecasts and decide how new projects should be connected and charged.” 

But a moratorium does nothing about existing data centers or grid investments already under way, and stopping projects in Maryland wouldn’t fully insulate the state’s customers from data center growth elsewhere in the PJM region. “I would view a moratorium as a temporary planning tool, not a long-term solution,” she said. “The important question is what the state does with the time it creates.”

Qiu, too, cautioned against pinning Maryland’s rising residential electricity rates on data centers alone, citing distribution-rate increases, power plant retirements, reliability-must-run payments, transmission investment and weather-driven demand as contributing factors. “I think the fair conclusion is that data centers are an important driver of recent capacity and transmission costs, but they are not the only reason Maryland residents are paying more,” she said.

She expects a mix of delay and relocation to follow any moratorium. “Developers can probably absorb a clearly defined six- or 12-month delay. An open-ended moratorium creates much more incentive to move elsewhere.” 

That relocation wouldn’t necessarily lower regional costs, she noted: “Maryland may avoid some local infrastructure and environmental impacts, but the project could still contribute to PJM-wide capacity and transmission pressures. Maryland would also lose the associated construction activity and tax revenue.”

Instead of a blanket ban, Qiu said she’d favor a policy that makes large loads pay for the costs they create. Developers should be asked to disclose duplicate interconnection requests, she said. “Otherwise, the same company can explore several sites at once, utilities may treat all of them as likely projects, and the resulting load forecast can become greatly overstated.”

In a statement, the Data Center Coalition, an industry trade group, urged local leaders to work with industry on regulatory frameworks rather than enact moratoriums or bans, which, it said, discourage investment and signal that a community is closed for business. The industry is committed to paying its full cost for the energy it uses, the group said, citing state-level analyses from Virginia’s Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission and the Arizona Corporation Commission. 

It also pointed to research from consulting firm E3 and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory finding that data centers have not been a primary driver of electricity rates nationally. The coalition said the industry supported 5.5 million jobs, $1.7 trillion in GDP and $204 billion in federal, state and local taxes nationally in 2024.