Graded Light and tightening. 22 laws, orders, rulings and local actions, each with its source, reviewed 4 November 2026.
The Jan 2025 PSC rule makes Georgia Power file every 100 MW contract for staff review before signing; 9,885 MW of new generation was certified 19 Dec 2025.
The Jan 2025 large-load rule sets risk-based billing and prepaid T&D above 100 MW; the Aug 2026 OpenAI order keeps termination shortfalls off other customers.
DeKalb's pause to 30 March 2027 and Paulding's to 1 Jan 2027 hit the Atlanta market, with Coweta, Savannah and Camden also paused; Fulton stays open.
The sales tax exemption survives intact with its investment and jobs thresholds after SB 410 was dropped from HB 463 on 3 April 2026 and the 2024 veto.
No data center water, air or disclosure law passed; EPD's Sept 2026 consent orders capped the Covington generators; the OpenAI order adds disclosure.
Scored on rules in force, 1 to 5. 5 is the most regulated. Pending rules set the arrow.
Georgia still offers its data center sales tax exemption: the governor vetoed a pause in 2024 and every 2026 bill to repeal it, protect ratepayers, require disclosure or impose a statewide moratorium died. The real controls come from the Public Service Commission, which since 2025 has required risk-based billing and staff review of every Georgia Power contract above 100 MW, and in August 2026 cleared a 3,200 MW OpenAI contract with added ratepayer conditions. The commission also certified about 9,900 MW of new generation for Georgia Power in December 2025 and froze base rates until 2028. Counties around Atlanta have used temporary moratoria and new ordinances, and the commission is now deciding whether a third party may power a data center on site.
Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms defeated Rick Jackson on 3 November 2026 (about 55 to 45 percent in unofficial returns) and takes office in January 2027 having campaigned on a statewide pause of new data center development while consumers and experts set rules. Democrats won both Public Service Commission seats, so from January 2027 the commission that reviews every Georgia Power contract above 100 MW and certified 9,885 MW of new generation in December 2025 has a 3 to 2 Democratic majority, with Peter Hubbard, who moved in February 2026 to decertify capacity lacking signed contracts, now in the majority. Democrats led for a House majority with a few seats uncalled while Republicans kept the Senate, so repeal of the sales tax exemption or ratepayer bills such as HB 1063 need bipartisan Senate votes in the session that opens in January 2027, but Gov. Kemp's veto no longer protects the exemption. The commission has still to set hearings on the VoltaGrid on-site power case agreed on 18 August 2026, and EPD's 30 September consent orders capping the Covington generators at 30 of 33 stand. Local pauses expire in sequence: Camden County's early November 2026, Coweta County's 23 December 2026, Paulding County's 1 January 2027, Savannah's late January 2027 and DeKalb County's 30 March 2027, where Shadowbox Studios' suit is pending.
Results as called on 4 November 2026. Positions are the winners' own statements; a platform is not a rule and does not change the grade.
No statewide moratorium, but 5 local pauses are in force as of 4 November 2026, in Camden County, Coweta County, DeKalb County, Paulding County, Savannah. Proposals and expired pauses are not counted.
Tightening. Georgia is graded Light, which means incentives in place and few new obligations. Tax break intact; regulators and counties, not lawmakers, set the limits. The outlook above says what is pending.
Georgia sits in TVA and Southeast utilities. The grid operator decides how a new large load is studied, what it must bring or pay, and whether it can be curtailed first; the state decides siting, permits, tariffs and incentives.
No. Georgia's data center incentives were not pulled back in 2025 or 2026 as of 4 November 2026.
On Genloop's five-line rubric (1 least regulated, 5 most) Georgia scores grid connection 2, power rates 3, siting and land use 3, tax treatment 2, permits and water 2, a mean of 2.4. The most regulated line is siting and land use: DeKalb's pause to 30 March 2027 and Paulding's to 1 Jan 2027 hit the Atlanta market, with Coweta, Savannah and Camden also paused; Fulton stays open.
Keisha Lance Bottoms (D) won the governor's race, flipping the office. Bottoms campaigned on pausing new data center development statewide, saying on 20 October 2026: "We need to pause. We need consumers like you. We need experts in this field to sit around the table and give us guidance as to how the state of Georgia should move forward." Legislature: Republican Senate; House leaning Democratic, not final, control changed. The arrow is tightening: Governor-elect wants a statewide pause, Democrats now hold the PSC 3 to 2 and may take the House; the Senate stays Republican.
22 items: each is a law, order, tariff, ruling, utility action or local decision that changes what a data center must do, pay or disclose, or where it may be built. Failed and pending measures are marked. Each links to its source.
The Georgia Environmental Protection Division issued two consent orders, published 30 September 2026, fining VoltaGrid $11,500 and Serverfarm $31,000 for assembling 33 gas engines in Covington without the required permits. The revised permit OP-29947 treats the power plant and the data center as a single emissions source and allows no more than 30 of the 33 generators to run at one time. The commission's separate inquiry into whether the arrangement violates state law on who may supply electricity had no hearing dates as of 8 October 2026.
Source: ajc.comIn late August 2026 commission staff cleared Georgia Power's contract for OpenAI's Effingham County campus, the seventh approved under the large-load rule. Georgia Power agreed not to recover early-termination shortfalls from other customers, to report cancellations within 15 days, to publish contract summaries and twice-yearly data center reports, and to raise its promised 2029 to 2031 bill relief from $8.50 to $15 a month.
Source: ajc.comOn 27 August 2026 the City Council approved a 155-day pause on data centers drawing 10 MW or more and on industrial buildings of 200,000 square feet or more built or converted for data center use, running to late January 2027, while staff draft regulations on noise, water, neighborhoods and grid strain. The vote followed data center plans in neighboring Effingham County.
Source: wtoc.comOn 18 August 2026 the commission voted unanimously to hold hearings on whether VoltaGrid may run 33 gas engines to supply an adjacent Serverfarm data center inside Georgia Power's territory. Petitioners cite the Territorial Electric Service Act and the cogeneration law; state environmental officials had already ordered construction stopped in July for lack of a permit.
Source: ajc.comShadowbox Studios and Henrico 183 filed suit in DeKalb County Superior Court on 5 August 2026 asking a judge to declare the county's data center moratorium invalid and let them build on a roughly 200-acre site at 3600 International Park Drive, and seeking compensation for an alleged $200 million loss in value. The studio says the planning department confirmed in writing three times that a data center was permitted by right and that it spent $37 million preparing the land; the county says the letters were not binding. On 9 September 2026 the Zoning Board of Appeals upheld the July permit denial and deferred the legal questions to the court. The case is pending.
Source: atlantanewsfirst.comDeKalb County commissioners first paused new data center development in July 2025 and have extended the pause several times, most recently on 7 July 2026 with one dissenting vote, to 30 March 2027. It covers new data centers and expansions in unincorporated DeKalb while the county writes rules; a draft zoning package was rejected on 23 June 2026, and the extension requires future rules to follow the Watershed Management water and sewer protocols. Shadowbox Studios and Henrico 183 sued the county in DeKalb Superior Court on 5 August 2026 to have the moratorium declared invalid, claiming a $200 million loss in property value, and on 9 September 2026 the Zoning Board of Appeals upheld the county's July denial of the studio's data center permit.
Source: atlantanewsfirst.comCommissioners voted unanimously in late July 2026 to stop accepting new data center proposals until 1 January 2027 while the county collects public input and reviews development standards. Applications filed before the vote are not affected.
Source: spectrumlocalnews.comOn 16 June 2026 commissioners unanimously approved a new 180-day moratorium on data center permit, rezoning, conditional use and variance applications, running to 23 December 2026 unless the county amends its data center ordinance sooner. Five proposals already filed keep their vested rights. At a 14 July 2026 work session commissioners discussed low-frequency noise limits, larger buffers, moving data centers from light industrial to industrial zoning with a conditional use permit, and allowing gas-fired on-site power subject to the noise ordinance; the county attorney said a cap on the number of data centers would need evidence to survive a court challenge.
Source: times-herald.comCamden County commissioners adopted a six-month data center moratorium for unincorporated areas on 5 May 2026, which runs to early November 2026. At a 29 September 2026 work session staff presented a draft data center ordinance and a proposed Technology zoning district; commissioners did not adopt it and recorded no extension. A planned Southeast Georgia Innovation Campus promoted at public sessions in Kingsland in October 2026 is anchored by a potential data center.
Source: actionnewsjax.comThe Senate backed SB 410 to wind down the data center sales tax exemption, but the House left it out of the list of tax breaks repealed in HB 463, the income tax bill that passed on 3 April 2026. A state audit published in December 2025 put the forgone sales tax at about $474 million in 2025; a state report cited by the AJC projects about $2.5 billion in 2026.
Source: news.bloomberglaw.comSB 34 would have barred Georgia Power from charging residential customers for the cost of serving data centers; it was rewritten in committee in February 2026 with language preferred by Georgia Power and the Data Center Coalition, and the Senate adjourned before a floor vote on restoring the original text. HB 1063, setting requirements for utility contracts with data centers, passed the House but not the Senate, and Speaker Jon Burns said the House would keep working on it during the interim.
Source: ajc.comHB 1012 would have paused data center construction statewide until February 2027 and HB 528 would have required annual public energy and water reports from sites of 30 MW or more. SB 408 would have ended the tax exemption in 2027. None was among the measures reported as passed when the session ended in April 2026.
Source: route-fifty.comNewton County adopted an emergency data center moratorium on 17 February 2026, extended it on 3 March, and on 7 April 2026 adopted Resolution R-040726b extending it through 7 October 2026. It bars the county from accepting rezonings, special and conditional use permits, development permits, site plans and building permits for any project that includes a data center while the county studies an ordinance. No extension past 7 October 2026 was found on the pages opened.
Source: newtoncountyga.govIn February 2026 the commission voted 3 to 2 against reconsidering its December 2025 certification of about 10,000 MW of new Georgia Power capacity and rejected Commissioner Peter Hubbard's motion to decertify a 797 MW resource and at least 2,622 MW of other resources for lack of executed customer contracts. Democrats Hubbard and Alicia Johnson voted to reopen; Republicans Jason Shaw, Tricia Pridemore and Bubba McDonald voted against. It was the first split vote by the commission seated in January 2026.
Source: fox5atlanta.comOn 19 December 2025 the commission voted 5 to 0 to certify about 9,885 MW of new gas, battery and solar capacity for 2027 to 2031 in dockets 56298 and 56310, with construction estimated at about $16.5 billion and roughly two-thirds of the capacity gas-fired. Georgia Power agreed to backstop the projects financially in 2029, 2030 and 2031 if data center contracts are not secured, the commission may alter or reverse certification, and large-load revenue must put at least $8.50 a month of downward pressure on a typical residential bill in those years.
Source: ajc.comOn 4 November 2025 Alicia Johnson and Peter Hubbard defeated Republican incumbents Tim Echols and Fitz Johnson, leaving a 3 to 2 Republican majority from January 2026. Two seats are on the 3 November 2026 ballot: Hubbard defends District 3 against Fitz Johnson, and District 5 is open because Tricia Pridemore ran for the U.S. House instead; Shelia Edwards (D), Josh Tolbert (R) and Thomas Blooming (L) are running, with a 1 December runoff if no one wins a majority. A Democratic sweep would give the party a 3 to 2 majority.
Source: news.ballotpedia.orgTroup County stopped accepting data center applications in unincorporated areas for 90 days from 16 September 2025 while it rewrote its development ordinance, and the city of LaGrange adopted its own pause the same month. Douglas County had adopted a 90-day pause in March 2025 by a 4 to 1 vote after a multi-building data center application was filed.
Source: gpb.orgIn summer 2025 the commission approved Georgia Power's agreement to hold base rates steady for three more years, with the next rate changes taking effect after a 2028 filing. Georgia Power says data center revenue will soften that adjustment.
Source: ajc.comThe commission unanimously approved rules in January 2025 for new Georgia Power customers above 100 MW: billing that reflects the risk of the project, payment of transmission and distribution costs as construction proceeds, and filing of each contract with the commission for staff review before signing.
Source: datacenterdynamics.comBartow County finalized a data center ordinance in January 2025 requiring a 200-foot buffer and limiting noise to 65 decibels from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. and 55 decibels from 6 p.m. to 8 a.m., measured over 30-minute periods. The county hosts a Switch campus with a 1,200 MW commitment from Georgia EMC.
Source: gpb.orgAfter a zoning review that began in May 2024, Atlanta in September 2024 prohibited data centers within the Beltline overlay area and nearby corridors. A separate 2026 proposal to require a special use permit for all new data centers citywide, with disclosure of estimated water and energy use and tree removal, had advanced through the Zoning Committee by June 2026 but was not reported as adopted.
Source: gpb.orgIn 2024 the General Assembly passed a bill to pause new data center sales tax exemptions and Governor Brian Kemp vetoed it, keeping the incentive in place.
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