The lower house of Virginia’s legislature, the House of Delegates, may consider a temporary moratorium on any new data center projects.

The bill, introduced by Virginia State Delegate Irene Shin, would prohibit local authorities from giving final approval to any applications relating to data centers, including rezoning, special exception, special use permit, site plan, or plan of development applications.

The moratorium will stay in place until July 1, 2028, or until all existing interconnection requests – most of which are coming from data center projects – have been fulfilled.

According to the Piedmont Environmental Council and the Virginia Conservation Network, two environmental advocacy organizations backing the bill, it is intended to “provide clarity on timelines for the provision of power to data center customers and prevent more projects piling up in an already flooded queue.”

“The moratorium will also reduce land speculation for data center development by sending a clear signal to the industry that there is a deficit of power here in Virginia.”

Dominion Energy, one of the state’s major electric utilities, has around 47.1GW of contracted capacity, according to its earnings call presentation in the third quarter of 2025. In July 2024, Dominion’s capacity was at 21.4GW, approximately half of that number.

This overwhelming demand led the utility to create a new rate class for large load users – including data centers – in November of last year, citing concerns that the cost of building out power generation and distribution infrastructure could otherwise be passed on to ratepayers.

Shin joins the ranks of lawmakers from Michigan, Oklahoma, Georgia, Maryland, and Virginia in calling for state-wide data center moratoria.

Although no state currently imposes such a moratorium,a growing number of local authorities are introducing moratoria in the areas under their jurisdiction. This is happening across the US in Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Kansas, Ohio, Tennessee, Missouri, Idaho, and Pennsylvania.