Maine’s data center moratorium suspends large projects—but leaves smaller ones in place

It’s a new data world in New England.

Maine’s new data center law, which passed the state legislature on April 14 and is headed to Gov. Janet Mills for approval, would suspend building large data centers until November 2027, allowing for a state analysis of potential environmental and energy impacts.

Big time. That analysis, focused on centers with a load equal to or exceeding 20 megawatts, will be the responsibility of the Maine Data Center Coordination Council; legislation sponsor state Rep. Melanie Sachs, a Democrat, told IT Brew that the group will include members from the public and private sectors.

“We need to have this conversation all together,” Sachs said. “That’s the point of the bill.”

In an email to IT Brew, Sachs added that currently there are no plans for data centers of that size in the state. The only project currently in development, a LiquidCool Solutions center at the former Loring Air Force Base in Limestone, is “able to move forward within the 20-mw limit,” Sachs wrote.

Restrictive language. Wannie Park, CEO and co-founder of AI orchestration company Pado AI, told IT Brew that greenfield, or new-build, data centers targeted in the bill are defined differently than legacy and potentially repurposed ones. Existing sites, all of which in Maine are under 20 megawatts, aren’t subject to the suspension.

“They already have power, they already have a site,” Park said. “They’re already operational.”

What’s next? By Maine law, Mills has until April 29 to sign, veto, or allow the law to pass without her signature. The governor has been cool to the legislation, citing her concerns during an April 10 budget signing ceremony over a potential project in the town of Jay that would be suspended due to the law.

“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, there needs to be a carveout for Jay,” Mills said. “Jay needs those jobs, with appropriate guardrails for conserving water resources, electricity resources.”

Mills’s concerns are unlikely to meet with much sympathy in the Maine legislature, which considered an exemption but didn’t pass it. As Sachs put it: “That option of exempting projects was considered by the legislature, and they chose to move forward the majority report, which was no exemptions for projects over 20 megawatts.”

The road ahead. To Park, the legislation shows the binary nature of the future of data center construction. On the one hand, the massive data center projects under construction by Meta, Google, and other tech giants will continue to be built in other parts of the country. Meanwhile, smaller data centers will likely dominate the market in Maine—and perhaps other states, if they too institute moratoriums.

“What we’re seeing is that the market is bifurcating, there are these massive things that Meta and Google are building for training,” Park said. “Then there are all these edge-case scenarios that already exist in Maine that can be repurposed…the truth is, over time, growth is actually going to be with these smaller, modular-edge data centers.”