New York Data Center Moratorium: No End Date Yet

New York’s data center moratorium is two instruments, and they run on different clocks. Executive Order 62, signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul on July 14, 2026, pauses certain state environmental permits for large data centers with no calendar end date. A separate bill, A11560 (the Responsible Data Center Development Act), carries a one-year permit moratorium of its own. It passed the Senate and Assembly on June 4, 2026, and as of Oct. 21, 2026, the Senate’s bill page shows it has not been delivered to the Governor.

The one-year figure belongs to the bill, not the executive order. If you are planning around a New York data center moratorium, the date that matters depends on which instrument you mean, and right now neither one has a fixed end date you can put on a calendar.

What Executive Order 62 Pauses

Section 1 of the order directs the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to “hold in abeyance all applications for any discretionary permit, approval, license, or similar form of permission for the construction or expansion of a data center” that “are or may hereafter be pending before DEC” and were not determined complete before the date of the order. New applications filed after July 14 are held too.

The pause runs “until DPS submits its report of the final Generic Environmental Impact Statement and associated findings statement.” The order ties that environmental review to the Department of Public Service’s large-load interconnection proceeding, Case 26-E-0045. It sets no date for the final report.

Three limits define who is covered:

• Discretionary DEC permits only. The order says the hold “does not apply to permits, approvals, licenses, or similar forms of permission from local governments.”
• 50 MW and up. Covered facilities are those that “consume or can consume 50 megawatts of energy or more,” along with other listed data center characteristics.
• Carve-outs. Facilities used primarily for manufacturing, research, education or medical care are excluded from the definition.

The order also has a dated deliverable, which is easy to confuse with an end date. Section 5 directs DEC to deliver a water-withdrawal report “no later than twelve months after the date of this order.” That report deadline does not end the permit hold.

What the New York Data Center Bill Would Add

A11560 is broader than the executive order and uses lower thresholds. These are the provisions in the bill text as passed. None of them is law today.

Provision in A11560	Threshold	What it would do
ECL 31-0103 moratorium	“Large data center”: peak demand of 20 MW or more	No DEC permit or approval “prior to one year after the effective date of this section,” with exemptions for renewals of existing approvals and projects that began construction on or before that date
ECL 31-0105 hearings	20 MW or more	At least one in-person public hearing in a host community, not less than three months before a DEC permit issues
Energy Law 19-103 renewable standard	Peak load of 5 MW or more	Annual third-party verification of renewable supply: at least one third for 2030 through 2034, two-thirds for 2035 through 2039, and 90 percent from 2040
Section 8 host community benefits	New large data centers, or expansions adding 20 MW or more	Fund residential heat pump, solar and storage installs, community infrastructure and water-impact measures
Public Authorities Law 1854-e efficiency goals	“Data center”: peak demand of 1 MW or more	Statewide energy consumption efficiency goals, set within one year; operators already running get two years to comply
Labor Law 224-g	“Covered data center”: 5 MW or more	Prevailing wage and apprenticeship requirements for construction, and a requirement that iron or steel used for construction be produced in the United States

The bill says it “shall take effect immediately.” So the one-year moratorium clock would start when the bill becomes law, not on June 4 and not on any date that has already passed.

The Senate vote on June 4 was 43 to 17, with one absent and two excused. The Assembly tally is not shown on either bill page, so we do not print one.

Two Clocks, Neither on a Calendar

	Executive Order 62	A11560
Status, Oct. 21, 2026	In effect since July 14, 2026	Passed Senate and Assembly June 4; not delivered to the Governor
Who it reaches	DEC discretionary permits, 50 MW and up	DEC approvals at 20 MW and up; renewable and labor duties at 5 MW; efficiency goals at 1 MW
How it ends	DPS submits the final GEIS report and findings	One year after the bill takes effect
Local permits	Expressly excluded	Moratorium section applies to DEC approvals

What This Means for Equipment Buyers

On our reading, the practical question for a utility or contractor serving a New York data center project is not “when does the pause end.” It is “which permit is this project waiting on.” A project that cleared DEC completeness before July 14 is outside the hold. A project that needs only local approvals is not held by the order at all. Ask for the project’s permit status before you plan a delivery date around it.

The bill matters for a different group. Its renewable-supply standard applies to every data center with a peak load of 5 MW or more, a tenth of the executive order’s threshold, so it would reach existing mid-size facilities that the order does not touch. Its labor and domestic iron and steel requirements start at the same 5 MW, but they apply to building or expanding a facility of that size, not to one that is simply operating. The bill lets a facility meet the standard by contract or by on-site generation. If it becomes law, a 5 MW-plus campus that chooses on-site generation would be buying generation, switching and interconnection equipment at a site that is already energized. That is our inference from the bill text, and it is conditional on enactment.

The domestic-content clause covers “iron or steel used or supplied for construction.” The bill text does not say how that applies to manufactured electrical equipment. Check it against the final enacted text and any implementing rules before you treat it like a federal Buy America requirement. For how other states’ pauses have worked out, our data center moratorium checklist and the large-load section of the utility procurement intelligence guide cover the project-level checks. For the substation side of these projects, see data center substation design and procurement.

Two events will move the dates:

• A11560 delivered to the Governor. It is the next step on the Senate’s status tracker, ahead of “Signed By Governor.” Watch the Senate bill page.
• DPS submits its report of the final GEIS and findings statement. That is what ends the executive order’s hold. The review is being run in connection with the large-load proceeding, Case 26-E-0045.

Related Reading

• Data Center Moratoriums: Verify the Project Before Forecasting Equipment Demand
• Data Center Substation Design and Procurement
• NYISO Summer 2026 Reserve Margin: 417 MW and Falling

The order text, bill status, Senate vote and bill provisions are from the Governor’s Executive Order 62 page, the New York State Senate’s A11560 and S10642 pages and the A11560 bill text, all read Oct. 21, 2026. Bill status can change; check the Senate page before relying on it.

We will update this when A11560 moves or DPS files its final report. The Feeder is our free weekly digest of the regulatory and supply signals that change what utility buyers spec.