July 14, 2026 — Rewiring America today welcomed Governor Kathy Hochul’s executive order establishing a one-year moratorium on new hyperscale data centers while New York develops stronger standards to protect ratepayers, communities, natural resources, and the electric grid.

The order directs the Department of Public Service to consider creating a New York Grid Acceleration Fund through which data centers could finance grid improvements, participate in demand response programs, and support new clean energy supply. Critically, it also directs regulators to evaluate approaches that would require data centers to fund clean generation and battery storage dedicated to their operations, including household-sited distributed energy resources.

Last year, Rewiring America’s flagship Homegrown Energy report showed that household energy technologies — including heat pumps, rooftop solar, batteries, and other distributed energy resources — could provide enough new capacity to meet the electricity demand expected from data center growth. Our follow-on Homegrown Energy blueprint outlined the policies needed to make that vision real, including requiring large new energy users to help fund household and community energy upgrades. By explicitly including customer-sited distributed energy resources in the options regulators should consider, New York has opened an important pathway to put that approach into practice.

Rewiring America founder and CEO Ari Matusiak issued the following statement:

“Governor Hochul’s executive order opens an important new chapter in the conversation about how we meet rising electricity demand while protecting families and strengthening the grid. By directing New York regulators to consider requiring data centers to fund the clean energy resources needed to serve their operations — including customer-sited distributed energy resources and battery storage — the Governor is creating an opportunity for these companies to invest directly in households as energy infrastructure.

“There is significant work ahead to turn that opportunity into real, durable investments in the grid and in New York communities. But Governor Hochul’s action today, following Governor Sherrill’s signing of the Data Center Fair Share Act in New Jersey last week, shows that a new approach is beginning to take hold: Large energy users should pay their own way, and their growth should help build an energy system that lowers costs and delivers direct benefits for households. Now we need to turn that momentum into results.”