The giant controversy over data centers seems to have popped up out of nowhere in the last few months, but it has landed in Guilford County government’s lap in a big way, and the Guilford County commissioners are now spending a whole lot of time on the issue.
Some members of the Guilford County Board of Commissioners were serving on the board more than a decade ago when Project Haystack – a proposed massive data center park in eastern Guilford County – caused an uproar among nearby residents. After years of discussion, that Haystack eventually got blown away.
Now, in 2026, the Guilford County commissioners are moving toward a possible temporary moratorium on new data centers while county officials decide how the increasingly massive and power-hungry facilities should be regulated.
The Board of Commissioners voted unanimously on Thursday, Sept. 17, to schedule an Oct. 15 legislative public hearing on a proposed moratorium of up to 180 days on potential data center projects in Guilford County.
The vote came in an afternoon work session in the Carolyn Coleman Conference Room at the Old Guilford County Court House, where commissioners heard presentations from county staff and spent considerable time discussing both the potential benefits and the potential problems associated with data centers.
The idea behind a moratorium is to give county planners time to write regulations specifically addressing data centers while Guilford County currently has no application for a major new facility pending.
And, at the moment, the county apparently has some breathing room.
Guilford County Planning Director Leslie Bell told the commissioners that the county has no pending building permit applications or other requests for a new data center in the unincorporated areas of Guilford County.
What the county does have is a zoning ordinance that doesn’t specifically define a data center.
Bell said the existing ordinance would likely treat one as a light industrial use or possibly as a warehouse-type use. But simply leaving data centers out of the ordinance isn’t necessarily enough to prohibit them, since courts have generally favored the free use of land rather than blanket prohibitions on uses that aren’t specifically listed.
That leaves Guilford County in essentially the same position as a growing number of local governments across North Carolina – trying to catch its zoning rules up with an industry that’s changing quickly.
Bell told the commissioners that at least 18 North Carolina cities or towns have adopted data center moratoriums lasting more than six months. He said a number of counties have also enacted moratoriums – some lasting a year or longer.
County staff spent much of Thursday’s work session explaining that “data center” can mean very different things.
Guilford County Economic Development Director Heather Schaeffer told the board that the category ranges from relatively small “edge” data centers to cloud centers and enormous hyperscale facilities with dramatically different requirements for land, electricity and water.
Schaeffer said that Guilford County already has a major data center – the American Express facility – which she said is about 510,000 square feet and falls somewhere between a regional cloud center and a hyperscale data center.
Commissioner Alan Perdue said that distinction should matter when the county writes its rules.
“One fallacy of this debate is one size fits all,” Perdue said.
Perdue noted that residents depend on data centers constantly, whether they think about it or not, including when using cell phones and even when calling 911.
He suggested that Guilford County might eventually establish different standards based on a facility’s size and electricity demand rather than forcing everything from a small data center to a 100-megawatt hyperscale facility through the same process.
That issue may become one of the central questions as county planners develop proposed regulations.
Schaeffer told the commissioners that data centers can provide substantial financial benefits to local governments. They generally involve extremely high taxable investments, particularly business personal property, while placing relatively little demand on many county services.
That can translate into significant recurring property tax revenue.
The trade-off is that data centers aren’t typically major permanent job creators.
Schaeffer said they create considerably more employment during construction than they do once they’re operating.
She also laid out the other side of the equation – potentially enormous electricity demand, water requirements, noise, heat, air quality concerns, compatibility with nearby residential development and the amount of land consumed by the largest facilities.
Another issue is what happens decades from now if changing technology leaves behind enormous, highly specialized buildings.
County planners are therefore considering not only how data centers should be approved, but also whether operators should face decommissioning requirements and provide some form of financial guarantee to deal with abandoned facilities.
Commissioner Pat Tillman said the county shouldn’t ignore those concerns, but he cautioned against automatically treating data centers as undesirable.
“I think we’re doing it the right way,” Tillman said. “I think taking our time, not rushing, but understanding our leverage and the questions we ask.”
Tillman said that local governments can impose conditions intended to protect residents and ratepayers rather than simply rejecting data centers outright.
He also pointed to the debate over water consumption, noting that other major industrial users consume large quantities of water without provoking the same reaction.
“It’s interesting – data centers are getting, in some ways, a bad rap,” Tillman said. “And I’m not pro or against. I’m just stating the facts.”
Tillman also argued that the issue extends beyond local tax revenue and land use.
He said the rapid development of artificial intelligence and quantum computing has national-security implications and added that the computing infrastructure behind those technologies matters far beyond Guilford County.
“I think the moratorium is the wise move,” Tillman said, but he added that commissioners should understand that “the implications are far reaching.”
Commissioner Carly Cooke said she supported using a temporary moratorium to give the county time to deliberately develop its rules.
“I really like the idea of, for a data center, we can just pause for a set period of time to be very intentional about our rights and policies and ordinances,” Cooke said, adding that the county should do everything it can to protect residents from negative impacts.
Bell said county staff could use a moratorium period to define data centers in the ordinance, determine the zoning districts where they should be allowed and establish an approval process.
Potential standards could cover setbacks, generator screening, vegetative buffers, building height and design, noise, lighting and decommissioning.
One possible approach would be to require conditional zoning, giving the county the ability to consider a proposed site individually and impose conditions agreed to by the property owner.
Another possibility would be a special use permit process, in which an applicant would have to demonstrate that a project meets specific standards and is compatible with surrounding uses.
Bell laid out a rough timetable of about 60 days to develop ordinance language, another 60 days for Planning Board consideration and roughly 45 days for the proposal to work its way through the Board of Commissioners process – a timetable that would fit within the proposed 180-day moratorium.
North Carolina law allows local governments to impose temporary development moratoriums, but they can’t simply declare one without explanation.
Bell said an ordinance would have to identify the conditions that make the moratorium necessary, alternatives the county considered, the types of development approvals affected, the reason for the duration and the steps the county intends to take while the moratorium is in effect.
Guilford County isn’t having the discussion in a vacuum: The North Carolina General Assembly has spent much of the 2025-2026 session debating how the state should handle the rapid expansion of data centers.
The most significant change actually enacted this year repealed the sales and use tax exemption for electricity consumed by qualifying data centers, although the state retained tax exemptions for qualifying data center equipment. The change became effective July 7.
Other proposals remain pending.
Senate Bill 730, the Ratepayer Protection Act, includes requirements dealing with some of the same concerns being discussed in Guilford County. The bill would require certain large data centers to enter service arrangements intended to recover the incremental cost of serving them and reduce the risk that those costs would fall on other electric customers.
It also contains provisions dealing with sound and site assessments, water use, cooling systems and local zoning authority. The bill passed the House in June and was returned to the Senate but hasn’t been enacted.
House Bill 1189, the Datacenter Transparency Act, would go much further by establishing a two-year statewide moratorium on permits and approvals for certain large data centers while the state studies their effects on the electric grid, utility rates, water, wastewater, air quality, noise and nearby property values.
That bill remains pending and has not been enacted.
House Bill 1180 would define a “large-load data center” as a facility with aggregate electric demand of more than 20 megawatts and would require utilities to seek approval for a dedicated tariff designed to assign capital and incremental operating costs to those customers.
That bill remains in the House Rules Committee.
For Guilford County, however, the immediate question is much more local – whether commissioners want to pause new data center approvals while those rules are being written.
Board of Commissioners Chairman Skip Alston said at the afternoon meeting thatg he had attended a recent Greensboro City Council work session on data centers and had learned a great deal from that discussion.
Alston then made the motion directing staff to schedule the Oct. 15 hearing so commissioners can consider an ordinance establishing a temporary moratorium of up to 180 days on potential data center projects.
The motion also authorized county staff to take the steps necessary to prepare the proposed ordinance in accordance with state law.
First and foremost, a community needs water and electrical/gas power, both at affordable prices. My most recent electric bill has 25% of the bill going to non-energy costs. Only 75% of the bill is the actual energy we used. We are on oor own well thank goodness but I understand that water bills just went up 11% in the area. Water in our area is not plentiful as Guilford County is at the top of a watershed with no large rivers supplying water.
The ability to have good paying jobs is also very important in our area where we are behind the other 3 largest cities in NC by about $25,000 per median household income. I do believe different varieties of Data centers are necessary for growth in our area to have a thriving means of employment within our county.
Mr. Tillman and Mr. Perdue both make valid points concerning the size of the data center and various companies from various industries and their water and electrical needs.
The key questions for any addition of a company, facility, housing development in our area in our watershed/electrical grid:
1.) What will be the water consumption and how will it impact our watershed and water bills?
2.) What will be the electrical/ gas consumption and how will it affect our electric/gas bills?
3.) Is there any short/long term environmental concerns?
4.) How much will it help lift the median household income in our county?
All of the above must be truly measurable and meaningful with no fluff or wild extremist rhetoric thrown in resulting in attacks and protests by environmentalist nuts who could care less about cost structure and the ability of a family to make a decent living.
We must protect affordable water, electric, gas supplies and have good paying jobs for our area all in one.
God bless our area that is one of the highest taxed counties under Democrat control in our state and one of the lower median household incomes of the four big cities in NC.
Every year we hear “the teachers deserve more money” and every year the county falls short. Interestingly, many of the same faces we see ranting about the evils of data centers will be right back ranting about teachers’ pay, property taxes, cost of electricity…and on…and on. In Louisiana, they seem to have figured out a way to take advantage of Data Centers and improve teachers’ pay ($50,000 teachers’ BONUS), along with other things. Maybe everyone should take a breath and consider the possibilities…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp2IbgJ5Z-8&t=988s
smart people are all over this while i procrastinate gutter cleaning & vacuuming . i have nightmares about wut is happening to my ‘data’ – perhaps my shoe size or ACT score is being used 4 nefarious purposes ?
Much ado about everything. Our data is stored permanently, to be used against us, and destroy all our freedoms. Giant “data centers” will needs LOTS of power. Our amigos at Duke Energy will oblige. Don’t bother opening your power bills, just go to the single room in your house with heat/A-C, and think how lucky you are. 1984 has been here before 1984, you just didn’t know it.
Ref our govt, and where our society is headed, hardly gives me anything positive to think about. How about a cabin in the woods in a remote County in NC? Mebbe a creek that you can hear alongside? That quiet.
“He also pointed to the debate over water consumption, noting that other major industrial users consume large quantities of water without provoking the same reaction.” This may well reflect the fact that most taxpayers have no knowledge of the actual rates per unit of volume of water consumed by bulk users, because the information is not provided to them. If there are discounts to such users, then residential users are being overcharged and would be highly motivated to eliminate them before paying higher fees or taxes to maintain or improve the water system.
this water ‘consumption’ is ambiguous. is it polluted & no longer usable ? if it turns into steam it ‘condenses’ back to liquid water. some people ‘distill’ their drinking water & pee which cycles beneficially back thru ecology – if not too much. urea water your plants but not too much because of the salt. make saltpeter for gunpowder when u pee under the house! don’t worry scott, he ain’t gonna do it
FDR said it well nearly 100 years ago. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Most of what we fear is that which we create, the monsters that really do not exist but what we perceive as monsters. Data centers have been around for decades now, but until now, we have crammed them with paper instead of digitized them. A good example is what DOGE found in 2025 just outside of Washington, DC. They discovered an old mine which went on for miles and miles filled with the paper records of all the retirement information of every Federal employee. It was only now being digitized. Such a waste of money both in utilities, paper, manpower, and space. Do a little research before you believe all the propaganda put out by China and the naysayers who are against data centers. Data centers use no water to cool them–they use air. As to electricity, no more is used than would be used at, say, an auto manufacturer or steel plant. On the plus side, our national security is protected, our information can be accessed faster and more readily, and it affords more jobs to be created.
Let me see. When I was a child, I read Dr. Seuss about the sky is falling. These days, it is the adults who are trying to make that happen–global warming, Y2K, Aztec calendar ending, climate change, AI, and now data centers. Sigh.
Feels good. But the sky IS falling.
The Digital Brownshirts have to have something to fight against government. It could be Flock Cameras or Data Centers. But what they don’t consider is with Data Centers, Amazon wouldn’t exist. Oh lordy, what would the Digital Brownshirts do then?
Amazon’s largest and most ambitious AI data center campus is Project Rainier, an $11 billion facility spanning 1,200 acres in New Carlisle, Indiana.
It has a 2.2 GW electrical load. One current industry tracker ranks the New Carlisle campus as the largest operational data-center project in the United States, at 2,200 MW.
Are you suggesting that you want that scale of data center in GC? or NC in general?
As for Amazon, if I didn’t have Amazon, I would do what I do now, shop at local businesses or order direct from suppliers.
Cheers
Thank you Scott, written in a way even I can understand!
Tillman and Perdue seem to be the only ones not playing CHICKEN LITTLE in this theater of the absurd. There is tons of data ( pun intended) available to anyone if they choose to research this sort of thing. Perhaps in the future there will be one common type of data storage (have our Commissioners thought about what the newest version of data center may be?) Take time to be informed and only then should you act. Data Centers are here. Take advantage of what they offer, providing it’s good for the taxpayer. (What a novel idea)
Let’s keep horses and not use those nasty automobiles. We hate oil and love animals.
i would leave urban for suburban/rural if i could use an animal to get to work,school,market,stuff within 5 miles of my home & DITCH the $50k money sucking MV fueled by gas or electron. My ‘vehicle’ eats grass n grain with manure for garden
Sounds like those people that say “Let’s keep our oil-based economy and not use that clean energy sources”
professor, how will data centers get rid of our oil-based economy? Specifics, please.
Would someone, anyone please tell us how mankind will benefit from data centers? I understand that data centers will make waging war more precise, but what do data centers do for everyday humans?
Suggesting that those opposed to data centers do not want progress are being hoodwinked by the big tech oligarchs who see more power, money, and control in data centers. The same with government.
I read that data centers “provide significant benefits across business operations, local economies, and digital infrastructure.” That explanation is so nebulous as to be meaningless. What business operations? What value to the local economy? What Digital infrastructures? Specifics, please.
Data centers take up farmland because they need space for their ugly buildings. They employee essentially no one. They disrupt wildlife. They generate an enormous amount of heat. The builders of data centers like to tout the property taxes they pay. Do you really believe this will last long? After data centers have gobbled up land, ruined the environment, and the tech oligarchs rule the world, people living in the future will ask, “What were our ancestors thinking?” It was never about progress; it was always about greed.
i benefit with instant usually reliable answers to my queries. prose on paper is less timely, kills trees takes up physical storage space while termites eat it
build them on ‘brownfields’ because ‘silicon & copper’ can’t die of cancer
Loving the moustache, Pat Tillman!