The reason the bans have so little bite is largely mechanical. A moratorium, defined by the firm as a temporary legal pause, usually a freeze on accepting new applications, does not revoke existing approvals. It only shifts a project's delivery date if several conditions all hold: it reaches the specific parcel, is in force, overlaps the project's timeline, and covers the use in a way the project cannot work around. Capacity already under construction or fully permitted is out of reach, and short pauses may expire before later projects need approval.

Per-project audits found the restrictions tend to miss the site, the permit or the timeline. Michigan has 45 enacted moratoriums but effectively zero pipeline exposure, with a Google campus there on industrial land already zoned for data processing. SpaceX's planned data centre in Brownsville, Texas, sits on land the city removed from its limits. The one clear success: a Pennsylvania township adopted a pause before NorthPoint filed for its special exception, pushing local approval to next year, though the company is still pursuing the project.

The 2.3 GW figure is also incomplete, because it excludes the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality pause, under which Governor Greg Abbott has directed the agency to issue no data centre permits, whether or not a project is in the ERCOT queue. Law firm Bracewell expects that pause to last until ERCOT finishes its review in mid-December. More than 400 local instruments are tracked across 17 states, including a few permanent zoning bans, and four states, New York, Texas, Pennsylvania and Oregon, acted within two months this summer.

The Economist's Archie Hall, reporting after a trip covering Michigan and Ohio, described the moratoriums as "much more bark than bite" for now, and suggested the bigger risk is deterring newer projects, which he guessed would affect where data centres end up more than whether they get built. SemiAnalysis concludes the restrictions would need to be materially more widespread and restrictive to slow the buildout, and its authors flagged a strict state-level moratorium, one blocking even off-grid projects, as the scenario that would worry them.