A bill proposing a moratorium on data centers in Maine received approval from the state’s House of Representatives on Monday.

The bill now moves to the Senate – the upper house of Maine’s state legislature – and requires its approval before it can become law. Any amendments made to the bill by the Senate will need to be reconciled with the version of the bill passed by the House.

LD307, sponsored by Representative Melanie Sachs, calls for a temporary moratorium on accepting any applications related to data centers that would offer more than 20MW of capacity.

This would remain in place until November 1, 2027.

In this year and a half period, the impacts of data centers would be studied, more stringent controls would be put in place, and the government would create the ‘Maine Data Center Coordination Council,’ which would “provide strategic input, facilitate coordinated state planning considerations, and evaluate policy tools to address data center opportunities.”

If passed, the bill would threaten plans to build a new data center campus called the Northern New England Energy Company that would offer between 100-300MW of capacity.

Calls for sweeping data center moratoria have abounded in the past 12 months.

Officials in Minnesota, New York State, Virginia, New Hampshire, Vermont, Oklahoma, Maryland, Georgia, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Wisconsin, and Michigan have all also called for state-wide bans on new developments.

Two weeks ago, US Senators Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez launched a high-profile attempt to impose a nationwide moratorium on data center development. The Artificial Intelligence Data Center Moratorium Act would prevent data center construction until the government enacts laws to protect workers and consumers, the environment, and civil rights from the impacts of AI.