Denver is planning a temporary moratorium on new data centers so it can write tighter rules around land use, power, water, and ratepayer impact.
The pause won’t touch the CoreSite DE3 build already underway, but it puts future Denver sites on hold at a time when AI demand is driving a broader construction boom.
At the state level, the fight is between HB 26-1030, which offers tax incentives and lets utilities plan for large new loads, and SB 26-102, which would force data centers onto new renewable generation instead of existing capacity.
Water use and grid stress are front and center, with Denver Water pushing for alignment of economic development, energy, and water strategy before the city becomes a real AI data hub.
Despite being home to multiple data center developers, Colorado’s lack of incentives has pushed most buildout to other states that already subsidize large GPU and cloud campuses.
This is a classic AI-era tension: a mayor betting heavily on AI to fix budget gaps and modernize services while the infrastructure those models need faces local political, environmental, and cost headwinds.
The article is worth a read to understand how one “AI-forward” city could still end up constraining the underlying GPU and data center build it needs.
Source: Denver plans moratorium on new data centers – Colorado Politics
