Data Center Policy Across the 50 States: A Survey of Incentives, Land Use, and Energy Regulation

This draft working paper presents the first comprehensive 50-state survey of data center policy, integrating five dimensions of enacted state and local regulation with project-level investment data and a scored cross-state typology. It draws on a novel dataset of state legislation, public utility commission proceedings, and project-level records.

Read the Draft Working Paper (PDF): This is a working draft circulated for comment; figures and findings are subject to revision.

Scope and Scale

The survey covers all 50 states as of June 2026:

• 890 documented projects, with active projects disclosing approximately $1.79 trillion in announced investment and roughly 240 GW of reported power capacity
• 49 states with at least one data-center-relevant incentive (38 with dedicated data center tax incentives)
• 34 states containing localities with enacted moratoria (208 local actions in total)
• 20 states that have rolled back, paused, or tightened incentives since 2024

Five Policy Dimensions

1. Tax incentives and economic development
2. Land-use restrictions, moratoria, and local governance
3. Energy regulation and grid impacts
4. Environmental and resource constraints — water, noise, and air quality
5. Federal regulatory overlay — FERC and DOE

Central Findings

• An incentive–restriction paradox: the same states that offer multi-decade tax exemptions host the localities that impose moratoria. We read this as a vertical mismatch in fiscal federalism, in which the tier of government that captures the benefits is not the tier that bears or perceives the local costs.
• Energy access, more than tax policy, gates siting: interconnection timing and generation adequacy shape where projects can land, with tax policy operating mainly as a tiebreaker among sites that already have a credible power path.
• The costs and benefits of development are distributed asymmetrically, with concentrated gains for developers and state treasuries set against diffuse costs borne by ratepayers and host communities.
• Despite the absence of federal coordination, states with very different market structures are converging on common policy mechanisms, most visibly large-load tariffs with minimum billing demand and long-term contract requirements.

Case Studies

In-depth studies of Virginia, Texas, Georgia, Michigan, and Arizona illustrate how the five dimensions interact in practice, alongside a 50-state policy compendium and a scored typology of incentive generosity and restriction intensity.

Related Resources

• Draft Working Paper (PDF)
• ALEA Institute