Data center restrictions tracker · North Carolina

Town of Hillsborough, North Carolina: data center moratorium (2026)

Data snapshot 2026-08-15 · part of Pricing the Fear of Data Centers

Town of Hillsborough, in Orange County, North Carolina, adopted a data-center moratorium on June 1, 2026. Its status in this snapshot is enacted.

The record reads: "The Town of Hillsborough enacted a 60-day moratorium on AI data centers and data mining to update its land-use ordinances, joining recent actions by Orange County, Chatham County, and the City of Durham in the region. (datacentertracker.org)."

Details

ActionClassStatusDateMW thresholdScopeSource
MoratoriumrestrictionenactedJune 1, 2026not county-widedatacentertracker.org

Jurisdiction type: municipality. County: Orange County. Dataset: datacentertracker. Snapshot August 15, 2026; documented actions, not a census.

Elsewhere in Orange County

North Carolina context

North Carolina has 49 documented local actions across 47 jurisdictions in this snapshot. There is no statewide restriction, incentive rollback, or large-load tariff on record for North Carolina in this snapshot.

A town that says no to a data center gives up local tax revenue, not jobs: one large campus pays $2M to $90M a year depending on the tax regime, against roughly 50 permanent jobs. The parent piece prices it and lists the conditions that beat a ban.

Sources

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