A state-wide moratorium on data center developments could be proposed by Pennsylvania legislators in the near future.

Democratic state senator Katie Muth wrote that she would introduce legislation “in the near future” to establish a “statewide three-year moratorium on hyperscale data center development,” according to a memo circulated to members of the Pennsylvania Senate on February 12.

Senator Rosemary Brown, a Republican, also announced her support for a series of legislative proposals regulating the data center industry, saying that she had “signed on as a co-sponsor of legislation that would establish a moratorium on data center developments in Pennsylvania.”

An actual bill proposing a state-wide data center moratorium has not yet been submitted to the Pennsylvania legislature.

Although several of Pennsylvania’s townships and counties have passed data center moratoria, there are currently no state-wide moratoria in any US state.

But proposals calling for their imposition are being considered by the legislatures of New York State, Virginia, Vermont, Oklahoma, Maryland, Georgia, Maine, and Michigan.

Many politicians at the national and state levels have called for greater regulation of the data center industry, and some, including Senator Bernie Sanders, have called for a nationwide moratorium.

There has been some pushback to these calls for a pause.

Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves said last week that those interested in implementing a data center moratorium were “yearning to submit our society to outside forces: mobs, international councils, or communist China."

"I do not understand the impulse to prevent our country from advancing technologically – except as civilizational suicide. "