An executive order signed in the middle of a legislative standoff makes New York the first state with a statewide data center permitting freeze on discretionary environmental approvals, and it landed on projects that hadn’t yet finished their paperwork.
Governor Kathy Hochul signed Executive Order No. 62 on July 14, immediately pausing discretionary state environmental permits issued by the Department of Environmental Conservation for any data center capable of using 50 megawatts of electricity or more. The pause runs until the Department of Public Service completes a Generic Environmental Impact Statement examining the industry’s effects on the grid, water supply, air quality, and host communities, a process Hochul has characterized as lasting approximately one year, though the order itself contains no fixed deadline. New York is the first state to impose a moratorium of this kind statewide.
