Ninety-three towns around the Garden State have banned data centers from developing in their municipalities over the past several months, according to climate activists tracking municipal activity in New Jersey.
At the same time, Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s administration is resisting calls from groups pushing for a statewide moratorium on data centers, favoring instead a piecemeal approach, recently supporting and signing several pieces of legislation meant to place guardrails on the tech industry’s rapid expansion.
Criticism over the massive amounts of energy needed to power the large facilities, as well as their potential negative effects on the environment, has spurred a flurry of political action in New Jersey and around the country. Maine’s state Legislature passed what would have been the first statewide moratorium on new data centers earlier this year, but Gov. Janet Mills vetoed the bill. Then in July, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed an executive order for a one-year moratorium on new large scale data centers in the state.
In New Jersey, the municipal bans come in the form of land use regulations.
“The single biggest threat to the data center business model right now [in New Jersey] is local community opposition,” said Abe Silverman, an energy research scholar at Johns Hopkins University.
The Climate Revolution Action Network, a Gen-Z activist group based in New Jersey, has organized this year around passing local bans on data centers in towns around the state. Along with South Jersey nonprofit the Pinelands Alliance, the group drafted ordinance language that it has shared with dozens of local lawmakers. Ben Dziobek, founder of the Climate Revolution Action Network, told Gothamist their coalition has had a hand in passing nearly 40 bans in Garden State municipalities so far.
But after doing some “deep research,” Dziobek said, he discovered that the number of bans was much greater — already nearing 100 of the state’s 564 municipalities.
“It's a feedback loop, right? One town nearby will pass it, and then the other town will grab the exact ordinance and pass it,” he told Gothamist.
Sherrill, who vowed to curtail out-of-control energy costs during her campaign, signed a bill last week that requires data centers to report their energy and water use to state regulators every six months. She also recently canceled $250 million in tax credits previously earmarked for tech companies developing facilities. In July, the first-term governor signed a bill that will require large data centers to pay for upgrades to the grid to power the facilities.
For Dziobek and some other activists, the governor’s actions aren’t enough. In May, a group of 60 environmental, labor and grassroots organizations submitted a letter to Sherrill urging her to use emergency powers to order a ban on new data centers until new regulations are implemented. The letter cited a Fairleigh Dickinson University poll that found 65% of respondents favored a ban on the construction of new data centers in New Jersey until new power plants are built.
The groups have also distributed a petition calling for a three-year moratorium on data centers.
“People are fired up and angry, and Gov. Sherrill and her team need to start looking at the polls because it's pretty clear across partisan lines that people want to see actual action and not continuous one-off bills that don't solve the breadth of this issue,” Dziobek said.
The Sherrill administration pushed back on activists' criticisms of its data center action.
“Instead of doing a three-year study on the issue, Gov. Sherrill took action, because that's what communities need right now," Sherrill spokesperson Darwin Pham said. "She announced the most comprehensive data center plan in the nation earlier this summer, and last week, she delivered on all four pillars to put power back in the hands of communities by giving them the tools to hold data centers accountable.”
“This includes making sure data centers pay their fair share for energy, report their water and energy use, make meaningful investments in communities, and deliver good-paying union jobs,” he said.
Pham noted that several prominent environmental and activist groups, including the Sierra Club and New Jersey Citizen Action, have backed Sherrill’s legislative approach on the data center issue.
The 93 towns in the Garden State banning data centers include North Jersey cities like Jersey City and Bayonne, coastal communities like Asbury Park and Neptune, and more rural or suburban areas like Warren in Somerset County.
Among the local officials passing these bans, opinions vary on whether a statewide moratorium is right for New Jersey.
Asbury Park Mayor John Moor, a Democrat, said coming out against data centers was “easy” because there’s no place in the 1.4-square mile city to put them. While he “cordially disagrees” with anyone who thinks data centers are right for the state, Moor said he understands if some communities want them.
“Maybe there's some places, if you've got so much land it wouldn't affect them one iota, be it power or water. So I mean, there could be exceptions to every law and every rule,” he said.
And in Jackson Township, Republican Councilmember Chris Pollak introduced the data center ban that local leaders passed this summer. “It's not that anybody was looking to start a data center in Jackson, New Jersey, but I believe if you have a position, you should be forward-thinking. And Jackson is a sensitive area," he said. "I believe over half of our land is either pinelands or wetlands.”
But despite his local concerns, Pollak said, he’s not in favor of statewide moratorium.
”That might be aggressive off the start. I think more restriction, I think more oversight is definitely needed,” he said. “But I don't know, it may fit into some areas. And I don't want to take that idea away if it fits in a community, if a community wants it and it can be useful.”
Daniel Croson, a Republican township committee member in Warren, said he favors New Jersey enacting a statewide pause on data centers.
“ I think anything outside of a full-scale moratorium on data centers until the issue can be studied more is too small,” he said.
Silverman said a moratorium in New Jersey wouldn’t have the same impact that it does in a place like New York.
“I think the situations are actually quite different because New York, being its own regional grid, a moratorium really makes a difference when you put a statewide moratorium in,” he said “Whereas in New Jersey most of the pricing impacts are actually coming from out of state.”
New Jersey is part of the PJM interconnection grid, which covers 13 states and Washington, D.C., including states that have more data centers.
“They're far more prevalent in Pennsylvania and certainly in Virginia and Ohio, as well as Indiana are the sort of regional data center powerhouses,” Silverman said.
Dziobek said that while he appreciates that Sherrill wants to work on data center legislation, their coalition will continue to push for a statewide ban.
“We really have to take this more seriously, because if we keep waiting months between bills, that's another data center being proposed,” he said. “And another community just as frustrated as they were before because there is no mechanisms for support on stopping these things.”
Correction: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Ben Dziobek's name as well as John Moor's name.
