Massachusetts Now Lets Any Town Veto a Data Center Over 25 Megawatts

Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey signed Executive Order 658 on September 8, barring state agencies from issuing permits for any data center with peak electricity demand above 25 megawatts unless the host community has approved the project and the developer has signed a community benefits agreement meeting state standards. "Unless a community says yes to a data center, we are saying no," Healey said. The order reaches every executive-branch permitting agency, which in practice means environmental, energy, and economic development review all stall until the municipality acts first.

Massachusetts is not a major data center state, and Healey said that is precisely why the administration moved now. The pipeline is small but concentrated. Servistar Realties has proposed a campus in Westfield that would require 274 megawatts, roughly the draw of a mid-sized city. Westfield and Lowell each adopted one-year moratoriums earlier this year, and Holyoke banned new data centers outright. In June the administration stopped accepting applications for the state's data center sales tax exemption. The 25-megawatt line matches the threshold Pennsylvania set in Executive Order 2026-05 on August 18, making it the second state this year to draw the permitting boundary at that number.

The order also carries the administration's Data Center Framework into permitting. Developers must fund the full cost of the energy infrastructure and clean energy supply their operations require, and must procure clean electricity matching annual consumption or pay into a new Ratepayer Protection Fund that returns revenue to utility customers. The Department of Environmental Protection has until December 31 to establish that alternative compliance payment. State agencies must publish guidance helping municipalities evaluate proposals by the end of the year, and are barred from signing non-disclosure agreements with data center developers.

For electrical contractors the practical change is sequencing. Municipal approval and a signed benefits agreement now come before state permits rather than running alongside them, which pushes design, submittals, and long-lead switchgear and transformer orders further back on a schedule already governed by equipment lead times. The clean energy condition pulls scope in the other direction. A project required to supply its own power adds on-site generation, interconnection work, medium-voltage distribution, and storage to a package that would otherwise stop at the utility service, and that scope lands on the same electrical contractor.

The hiring consequence is concentration. The order directs agencies to encourage project labor agreements, local hiring, and apprenticeship participation on projects that clear the new bar, which favors contractors already carrying registered apprentices and state-licensed journeymen in the Commonwealth. Fewer jobs will start, but the ones that do will run longer and carry firmer labor commitments. Facilities affiliated with accredited colleges, universities, medical providers, or state-sponsored programs can be exempted from the 25-megawatt threshold by the secretaries of energy and environmental affairs and economic development, leaving a narrow lane for institutional work that does not need a town's blessing.

Massachusetts has made a local vote the first gate on every large data center in the state.