Plain-English background. Minnesota sits in MISO (Midcontinent Independent System Operator) — the same RTO that just received FERC's June 18 show-cause order on large-load tariff design. Minnesota's data center growth had been more measured than Iowa/Wisconsin/Indiana — fewer hyperscaler campuses, more secondary-tier colocation. That's now changing rapidly. Minneapolis (June 25) — what passed. The Minneapolis City Council approved a five-month pause on new data center development, originally framed as a 6-month moratorium with eventual downtown carve-out. The final ordinance language: 'no data center facility shall be established, re-established, or expanded' within Minneapolis, with all zoning approvals, building permits, construction permits, and demolition permits blocked during the pause period. Department of Community Planning and Economic Development is directed to study impacts on communities citywide. Key structural detail — the downtown exemption. The ordinance carves out data centers under 350,000 square feet of new or expanded space located in downtown Minneapolis, defined as the area bounded by Interstate 35W, Interstate 94, Plymouth Avenue, and the Mississippi River. This is a NEW exemption mechanic that hasn't appeared in the prior 9 weeks of moratoriums — it combines a SIZE cap (350k sqft = roughly equivalent to ~30-40 MW for a typical hyperscale build) with a GEOGRAPHIC scope (downtown only). The Minneapolis Downtown Council publicly welcomed the exemption. The political read: the council wanted to be seen as tough on hyperscaler builds without blocking the smaller financial-services / cloud-edge / enterprise-colocation projects that are downtown-relevant. Inver Grove Heights (June 26) — what passed. The IGH City Council voted 3-2 the following day to pass a 1-year moratorium covering the entire city. The triggering project: QLevr, a Florida-based developer, has proposed a 54,000-square-foot data center on Carmen Avenue East. A second pending proposal at the former Travel Tags property is also covered. The vote came one day after IGH residents filed an Environmental Assessment Worksheet (EAW) petition with the State of Minnesota — an EAW requires 100 signatures and procedurally pauses development pending environmental review, separate from the moratorium itself. The developer threat. QLevr's attorney letter (from Iverson Rivers Law Firm — the League of Minnesota Cities retained outside counsel in response) asserted that if the project is stopped, QLevr will sustain damages 'in excess of $150 million.' The council voted to pass the moratorium anyway. This is the second time in 5 weeks a moratorium has been passed in the face of an explicit large-damages litigation threat (Inver Grove Heights $150M, Hill County TX $100M before it was rescinded), and the FIRST time a council has held the line through a vote. The MISO cluster geography. Together with the Wisconsin cluster from last week (Dane Jun 4 / Superior late May / La Crosse Jun 18 26-2), the Twin Cities-area moratoriums put 5 contiguous MISO jurisdictions under active pause status within a 30-day window. That's the cleanest state-level cluster after Wisconsin and one of the four (with WI, NC, FL) that now exists.
Why it matters
Three implications. (1) The MISO concentration matters because MISO is one of the six RTOs FERC issued show-cause orders to on June 18 (30-day reliability + 60-day tariff). The Minnesota cluster, combined with the existing Wisconsin cluster, means MISO now has 5+ active moratoriums in jurisdictions whose state regulators will be cited in MISO's August 17 tariff filing. FERC's tariff design will have to make a substantive choice about whether to override local moratoriums via federal tariff preemption or accommodate them. That choice is the next major federalism question in the cost-allocation fight. (2) The Minneapolis size+geographic exemption is the template Cliff's corpus needs to flag as the 'preferred' exemption design for cities with mixed urban/suburban data center pipelines. The political logic is durable: it lets a council take the headline 'we paused data centers' without breaking the colocation/cloud-edge economic-development relationships that downtown business interests care about. Expect Boston, Seattle, Denver, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, and similar mid-tier cities to copy the format if they face moratorium pressure in 2027. (3) Inver Grove Heights is the first proof-point that the developer-litigation threat is NOT automatically winning. Hill County TX (May 27 / June 4) was a rescission. IGH (Jun 26) was a hold. Two different MN/TX procedural environments, two different outcomes. The probability that a $150M-letter threat reverses a moratorium is now somewhere between 0/1 and 1/2, not 1/1. That's a real data point for any developer drafting a similar letter in the next 30 days and a real data point for Cliff diligence on developer-side outcome probability.
Related filings
FERC show cause orders Jun 18 / Section 206 / PJM MISO SPP CAISO ISO-NE NYISO / 30-day informational report Jul 20 / 60-day tariff response Aug 17 / 90-day abeyance request Aug 3 / five reform categories / cost-shift prevention is the big one / colocation + BTMG rules / flexible-load transmission services
Plain-English version. On June 18, 2026, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC, the federal regulator with jurisdiction over the interstate transmission grid) used Section 206 of the Federal Power Act to issue what are called 'show-cause orders'...
CO HB 1030 / killed 11-2
HB 1030 was Colorado's primary 2026 attempt to attract data-center investment via tax incentives — the bill was first introduced in January and modeled loosely on the sales-and-use exemption regimes that Texas, Virginia, Georgia, Ohio, Iowa, Nebraska, and...
KUNC / CPR News / The Colorado Sun / The Durango Herald ↗
T-8 to Jul 10 ERCOT ILLE Form W deadline / Form W Part A now posted Large Load Integration page / notarized to TSP DSP / miss = 438000 MW proposed queue 89% data centers 3-5 years slower / Jul 24 TSP DSP to ERCOT step 2 / Microsoft Fairwater Mount Pleasant WI fully operational Jun 23 / 3.3B first phase / Brad Smith world's most powerful supercomputer / MISO not PJM / low friction state routing / 550 FTE 10000 construction workers / capex not slowing on T+0 morning / state-vs-federal misalignment produces geographic sorting
Plain-English background on the operational track. Yesterday's newsletter covered the regulatory calendar (VA tax, IL DCIP freeze, FL SB 484, Trump EO 14318, PJM auction open, ERCOT Batch Zero deadlines, Abbott Texas memo). Today's operational read is about...
NY S.10642 / A.11560 / Responsible Data Center Development Act / passed both chambers Jun 23 / on Hochul's desk 10-day clock / 1-yr pause >20MW / 18-month EIS / separate electric+water rate class / 33% renewable by 2030 / mandatory public hearing / 51 NYISO projects in queue
Plain-English version of what happened. New York has a part-time state legislature that adjourns in mid-June; in the last 72 hours of the 2026 session, both the Senate and Assembly passed S.10642/A.11560, the 'Responsible Data Center Development Act,'...