# North Carolina Data Center Moratoriums and Ordinances Tracker | FOUND Research

Which North Carolina counties and towns have paused or restricted data centers? A sourced tracker of moratoriums, ordinances, and pending votes.

Canonical: https://lotsfound.com/research/north-carolina-data-center-moratoriums/

## Where North Carolina has paused data centers

County and town actions on data centers: moratoriums adopted, ordinances passed, votes pending, and proposals rejected. Every row links to the meeting record or local report.

## What the data shows

Local pauses on data centers spread quickly across North Carolina from late 2025 into 2026, mostly as twelve-month moratoriums while boards write zoning standards for the use. Some counties rejected a pause and some adopted an ordinance instead. A bill in the General Assembly proposed a two-year permit moratorium for the whole state and stalled in committee.

## How to use it

Developers can see which jurisdictions have an active pause and which have written standards a project can meet. Reporters and planners can see the pattern by date. Landowners can see whether their county has acted.

## How this dataset was built

Rows come from county and town meeting records, agendas, adopted ordinances, and local news reports of the votes. A row enters only when a public page confirms the action and the date. Moratoriums that cover only crypto mining are excluded. Actions we could not confirm on a live page are left out until we can.

## Questions

### Which North Carolina counties have a data center moratorium?

The table lists every county and town action we could confirm, with the date and the vote. Most adopted pauses run twelve months and expire on the anniversary of the vote unless extended.

### Does a moratorium stop every data center?

No. A moratorium pauses new applications for the period the board sets. Projects already approved usually continue, and courts have exempted individual projects from a later pause.

### Can I reuse this data?

Yes. The dataset is licensed CC BY 4.0. Cite FOUND and link to this page.

Transactions are handled through a licensed North Carolina real estate brokerage.