Fifty Indiana Counties Now Restrict Data Centers. Starke Banned Them Oct. 19.

At least 50 Indiana counties and communities now limit or bar data center development, according to a tracker kept by Indiana University's Environmental Resilience Institute and reported Oct. 21. Thirty-two have passed moratoriums, 14 have adopted regulatory ordinances specific to data centers, and in four, data centers are not permitted at all. Starke County approved its ban on Oct. 19.

The count has climbed through the year. In early July the same tracker showed about 30 jurisdictions restricting data centers: 17 moratoriums, 11 ordinances and two outright bans. By late August it was 40. What has changed since summer, Institute assistant director Therese Dorau said, is not only the number of moratoriums but that several have hardened into permanent decisions. Marshall County made its ban permanent. Marion County's pause, adopted in August, runs through the end of 2027 and created a committee to draft zoning rules. Steuben County passed a six-month moratorium on Sept. 15. DeKalb County's expired earlier this month.

None of this stopped the projects already through the door. Marion County exempted three previously approved developments from its ban. On Oct. 7 the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission unanimously approved AES Indiana's $737.3 million plan to serve a 390-megawatt Google data center in Morgan County, southwest of Indianapolis, consisting of two battery energy storage systems, a solar facility and the transmission work to connect them.

That was the first data center filed under a 2025 Indiana law requiring large electricity users to cover 80 percent of the costs reasonably assigned to them. Google is paying $32.3 million for direct connection facilities, and $73.8 million in network upgrades will enter AES Indiana's transmission rate base for recovery in future retail rates. The contract runs at least 15 years. The Institute counted roughly 38 operating data centers in Indiana at the start of 2026 and 37 more planned or under construction, with statewide data center demand projected to rise from about one terawatt-hour in 2025 to more than 6.5 by 2030.

For contractors staffing Indiana work, the map has been redrawn three times in four months, and it is drawn county by county. Where a moratorium is in force there is no plan review to file and no permit to pull, so crews cannot be scheduled against a site at all. Where an ordinance governs instead, the job proceeds under added conditions: Lake County's, the most comprehensive the Institute has catalogued, reaches noise, setbacks, electricity availability, energy efficiency, water management and decommissioning, each of which adds review cycles before anyone pulls wire. The near-term effect is concentration. Fewer counties carry more of the buildout, and a growing share of the electrical scope sits on the utility side of the fence, in substation, battery storage and collector work rather than building power distribution.

Indiana courted this buildout with state incentives. Its counties are now deciding, one commission vote at a time, where it is allowed to land.