Maryland’s Data Center Backlash Is Growing. Here’s What Comes Next

By Denise Robbins, CCAN Communications Team

Across Maryland, communities are hitting the brakes on the rapid buildout of massive data centers.

After Anne Arundel County joined the growing list of jurisdictions adopting a temporary moratorium, roughly 90% of Marylanders now live in a county or city with some form of data center ban or pause, according to CCAN Action Fund’s latest tally. The movement now stretches from Western Maryland to the Eastern Shore and across the state’s largest population centers.

Largo, Prince George’s County Data Center Rally on July 1, 2026

And Maryland is not alone. Across the country, opposition to rapid data center expansion is growing as communities confront concerns about electricity demand, utility bills, water use, noise, land use, and environmental impacts. Recent national polling has found a full seven of ten Americans oppose data centers being built in their area. 

Why communities are pressing pause

The scale of the AI boom is difficult to overstate. AI data centers require enormous amounts of electricity, and many also require significant amounts of water for cooling. In the PJM region, which includes Maryland, rapidly rising data center demand is already threatening grid reliability and infrastructure costs, with many fear these costs being passed onto ratepayers. 

Meanwhile, the rules designed to protect ratepayers, water supplies, local communities, and the climate are still catching up.

That is why so many local governments have chosen temporary pauses. Communities need time to understand the consequences and put enforceable safeguards in place.

Governor Moore acted — but Maryland still hasn’t paused

In mid-September, Maryland Governor Wes Moore said he would “absolutely sign” a statewide data center moratorium if it came to his desk. And yet he issued an executive order one week later that included no mention of a moratorium. 

Instead it created a new statewide framework for reviewing large data center projects. The order created a Maryland Data Center Task Force, required greater transparency and stronger criteria around proposed projects, barred state employees from entering certain nondisclosure agreements with developers, and established principles around ratepayer protection, economic benefits, community input, environmental impacts, and accountability.

Baltimore City Data Center Moratorium Rally June 29, 2026.

Those are meaningful reforms, but it’s not enough. On top of ignoring a statewide moratorium, Governor Moore’s order also did not establish a requirement that new data centers operate on 100% clean energy.

How can Maryland continue approving massive new projects while the state is still developing the rules meant to govern them?

The risks don’t stop at electricity and water

Concerns about AI extend far beyond electricity and water. A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 62% of respondents viewed AI as capable of endangering humanity’s future, while leading AI researchers and technology executives have publicly warned that advanced AI could pose catastrophic risks.

Those long-term risks are still being debated. But one thing is already clear: the physical infrastructure powering the AI boom is arriving now, in real communities, with real consequences, and not enough has been done to protect us from those consequences. 

How to Fight Back: Join Marylanders from across the state on November 7

Frederick Amazon Data Center Rally in Adamstown on May 28, 2026

On Saturday, November 7, CCAN and Nature Forward will bring Marylanders together at the Baltimore Convention Center for People Over Data Centers: Maryland Action Summit.

The one-day conference will feature Congressman Jamie Raskin, climate activist and author Bill McKibben, state and local elected officials, environmental-justice leaders, community organizers, and advocates from across Maryland. Panels will cover data center impacts on electricity bills and the grid, water resources, farmland and open space, environmental justice, AI risks, and what stronger statewide safeguards could look like in 2027.

The summit runs from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, and a $25 general-admission ticket (or $15 for students) includes morning coffee and lunch. 

The fight against Maryland’s data center boom is already statewide. November 7 is a chance to bring those local fights together, learn from one another, and decide what comes next. Learn more and sign up for the People Over Data Centers: Maryland Action Summit!

Sign up for the People Over Data Centers Summit here

Gov. Moore’s Data Center Executive Order Takes Positive Steps But Fails to Embrace Moratorium and Clean Energy Mandate, Leaves Communities Vulnerable

ANNAPOLIS, MD — Governor Wes Moore took positive steps to protect Marylanders from the harms of data centers with his executive order (EO) released today. In a press conference announcing the EO, the Governor spelled out five principles guiding the state’s criteria for considering data center projects, barred Maryland employees from entering into nondisclosure agreements with data center developers, and called on the General Assembly to repeal the sales and use tax exemption for data centers. However, the EO fails to establish a statewide moratorium on data center development, something county and municipal leaders have been seeking for months. It also contains no explicit clean energy requirements for data centers even as the global climate unravels. 

With 80 percent of Marylanders – including residents across red and blue regions – now living under some kind of temporary local ban or moratorium on data centers, leaders and activists across the state have been hoping Moore or the General Assembly would establish rigorous state-level guidance and leadership on this critical issue. At the top of that wish list is a multi-year state-level pause on new data center permits to allow true reform policies to be developed and take hold. Moore even told Punchbowl News last week that he would sign a moratorium bill from the General Assembly if it reached his desk in 2027.

Governor Moore’s executive order falls silent on this issue. Instead, his EO establishes the Maryland Data Center Accountability Task Force that must consider whether a data center project meets five principles: ratepayer and grid protections; economic benefits for Marylanders, including local hiring and union jobs; the preservation of community input, including no state preemption of local decisions; language around environmental protections, but no requirements for clean energy; and transparency and accountability, including the establishment of a public dashboard to track proposed projects and the commitments made by data center companies. Several of the outlined principles begin to address on-site pollution, rising energy bills associated with data center infrastructure and demand, and community impacts, but the principles are vague and leave the agencies with little direction and significant discretion. 

Also, with climate change impacts escalating across Maryland and the world, Governor Moore in his executive order, fails to require all new energy required from future data centers come from 100 percent clean power, a top priority of virtually every environmental group in the state. The EO directs the Task Force to look at the State’s climate commitments, but they are just one factor to be considered; the EO does not mandate adherence to the state’s climate goals or require data centers to run on clean energy. 

Brittany Baker, Maryland Director of Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN), issued the following statement:

“Governor Moore’s executive order takes several meaningful steps forward and the legislature will have to finish the task. Maryland communities confronting data center development speak in the language of bans and moratoriums. A statewide multi-year pause on data center development is the most logical next step.

“Given the deepening climate crisis, Gov. Moore and the General Assembly must explicitly require all new data centers run on 100% clean energy. Period. Full stop.

“A multi-year statewide pause on new data center approvals is needed until strong, enforceable protections for ratepayers, water, air, land, and the climate are fully in place. With scientists warning that the window to prevent the worst impacts of climate change is rapidly narrowing, Maryland should not lock itself into a new wave of massive energy demand and fossil-fuel infrastructure before those safeguards exist.”

CCAN is supportive of policy proposals to ensure that data centers pay for infrastructure they incentivize the incumbent utility to build, procure their own clean energy resources, ban nondisclosure agreements, eliminate by-right development, and close regulatory loopholes that allow diesel generation to escape compliance with the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. 

CCAN is now calling on Marylanders to sign the petition for a statewide moratorium on new data center development. In addition, the group will be hosting “People Over Data Centers”- Maryland Action Summit on November 7 in Baltimore alongside Nature Forward. 

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Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN) is the first grassroots organization dedicated exclusively to raising awareness about the impacts and solutions associated with global warming in the Chesapeake Bay region. Founded in 2002, CCAN has been at the center of the fight for clean energy and wise climate policy in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC.