Washington, DC Data Center Moratorium Tracker
No data-center moratorium, pause, siting restriction, or tax-incentive rollback is on record in Washington, DC at state, city, or county level as of October 2026. Below: what we check to be able to say that, the grid rules that do bind large loads here, and where the nearest measures are.
Does Washington, DC have a data center moratorium?
No. As of October 2026 there is no statewide moratorium, pause, siting restriction, or tax-incentive rollback on record in Washington, DC, and no city or county measure inside it either. Washington, DC is one of 1 of the 51 states and DC where nothing is on record. The other 50 carry at least one measure.
That is a finding, not a gap. Here is what it rests on, re-checked weekly:
- State legislatures. Bill text and status pages for moratorium, siting, ratepayer, and data-center tax-exemption measures, including bills that failed or were vetoed.
- Governors' offices. Executive orders and directives, which is how most measures in force nationally were actually imposed.
- City and county governments. Council votes, zoning ordinances, and public notices, which move faster than state law and account for 1253 of the entries in this tracker.
- National compilations. NCSL, MultiState, and Good Jobs First, used to find measures worth chasing to a primary source, never cited on their own as proof one exists.
Nothing is added to this tracker until it can be tied to one of those. If you know of a measure in Washington, DC we have missed, tell us and we will source it and add it.
What does bind large loads in Washington, DC
A moratorium is only one way a data center gets stopped. The grid operator decides whether it can connect at all, and on what terms. Washington, DC sits in 1 footprint.
Entire District in PJM (Pepco).
The nearest measures
2 of the 2 states bordering Washington, DC have at least one data-center measure on record. Restrictions tend to travel between neighbors, so this is usually where the next one comes from.
The national picture
Across the whole tracker we hold 334 state-level measures in 49 states and 1253 city and county measures, against 1419 primary sources. Washington, DC contributes none of them.
The states with the most on record are worth watching if you are siting in Washington, DC, because the arguments arrive before the ordinances do. Browse every state →
Data centers in Washington, DC
The US Data Center Map identifies 9 facilities run by 7 operators in Washington, DC, each one placed from primary sources and listed by city and by operator, with the measures on this page beside them.
Open the Washington, DC data center map → · The US Data Center Map →
How to read this page
In force = a moratorium, siting restriction, or tax-incentive rollback that is currently enacted, by statute or executive order. Paused = a temporary hold on new incentives or applications. Proposed = introduced and still pending. Failed / vetoed = died in committee, was voted down, or was vetoed.
This page is generated from the same primary-sourced dataset as the national U.S. Data Center Moratorium Tracker and is re-checked on the same weekly cycle, whether or not anything changed. Legislative status changes quickly; it is informational, not legal advice. Spot something out of date in Washington, DC? Tell us.
Companion references: the Data Center Grid Operator Watchlist for the interconnection and curtailment rules that bind here, the Data Center Water Tracker for water mandates, and the Data Center Delay Watchlist for named projects.
What the pushback is about
Where communities have moved, the objections repeat from state to state: strain on the electric grid, water drawn for cooling, and the sense that a facility takes local resources without giving much back. SAVRN builds AI factories designed around those three objections: on-site power that does not lean on the public grid, direct-to-chip cooling that does not consume municipal water, and a training institute that puts local people to work inside the building.
See how a SAVRN factory works Talk to us about a Washington, DC site