First Statewide Data Center Ban Passed by Maine Legislature
On Tuesday, the Democrat-controlled state legislature in Maine passed a ban on large data centers. It wasn’t exactly close. The state’s House passed it 79-62, and the Senate passed it 21-13—along party lines with a few exceptions, according to the Wall Street Journal. Governor Janet Mills’ signature is still needed before it becomes law, and the Journal says she has signaled interest in signing such a ban under certain circumstances. This ban passed in spite of—or perhaps because of—relatively low data center activity in Maine. Business Insider maps likely data centers construction by tracking permit requests for certain generators, and Maine appears to only have two such projects. However, data center demand drives up home energy costs, and the website Electric Choice ranks Maine fourth highest in electricity prices.
Insider also notes that similar legislative efforts have stalled or failed outright in Georgia, Maryland, Michigan, New Hampshire, New York, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia, and Wisconsin. Plenty of other cities and states are still considering laws like this one. Maine’s ban has frequently been described as a ban on “large” data centers, but the threshold is 20 megawatts, which is actually pretty low, and effectively blocks construction of what is commonly known as an AI data center. According to the Regional Plan Association, while data centers used about two megawatts of electricity when the concept of a data center was new, the average contemporary data center uses about 40 megawatts.
Maine’s bill places a moratorium on construction until November of 2027, and also creates a council whose job will be to evaluate the cost of data centers on the people of Maine.
