Data Centers Are Coming to Your Township. Is Your Zoning Code Ready?

Written by Andrew Miller

Prepare for the Power Plants, and the Solar and Storage that Must Come With Them

Every township supervisor has heard about the data center boom by now. What fewer have connected is this: the same wave of data center development driving up local tax-base excitement is also pushing Pennsylvania’s electric grid toward a documented reliability crisis — and the fix for that crisis is going to need land, and it’s going to need it fast.

That’s the conclusion of “Assessing Electricity Resource Adequacy in Pennsylvania and PJM,” a September 2026 study Synapse Energy Economics prepared for the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission. The PUC asked independent modelers to test the grid’s ability to keep the power on through 2040. The results should be required reading for every planning commission and board of supervisors in the Commonwealth.

The Numbers Are Stark

Under the study’s realistic “Reference” scenario, the PJM grid’s projected 2030 reliability score is nearly six times worse than the region’s own planning standard. Under a plausible high-growth scenario, it’s 132 times worse — the modeled equivalent of 13 days of outage events in a single year, driven by more than 200 terawatt-hours of new data center demand added between just 2029 and 2030 alone.

None of this gets solved by wishing the data centers away. It gets solved by new generation and storage getting built close to where the demand and grid capacity actually are — and that means gas plants, solar, and batteries all competing for sites in the same townships at the same time. Pennsylvania already leads every other PJM state, with nearly 40 GW of generation advancing through PJM’s interconnection queue, heavily weighted toward solar and storage because those resources can be permitted and built fastest, alongside new gas capacity that remains part of the mix.

One Blind Spot, Four Land Uses

Most zoning ordinances in Pennsylvania were written decades ago and are silent on all four of the uses now converging on rural and industrial land: data centers, gas- or coal-fired generating stations, utility-scale solar, and battery energy storage systems (BESS). Treating any one of these as an afterthought — or assuming your industrial district’s generic “manufacturing” or “utility” language covers it — is a recipe for the same problem playing out four times over: a use nobody defined, standards nobody wrote, and a developer’s attorney arguing your ordinance is unconstitutional.

PJM has already cut its interconnection review timeline from roughly four years down to one or two. If your zoning ordinance hasn’t been updated to address data centers, power plants, solar, and storage, it may not be ready for what’s coming next.

This Isn’t Hypothetical — Townships Are Already Being Sued

Under Pennsylvania’s “fair share” and exclusionary zoning doctrines, an ordinance silent on a legitimate use — or one that permits it nowhere in the municipality — can be declared substantively invalid, entitling a developer to build as proposed, on the site of its choosing, regardless of the underlying district. This is not theoretical. Hazle Township (Luzerne County) adopted a 180-day curative amendment after a court ruled a developer could challenge its ordinance because it never addressed data centers. Cecil Township (Washington County), Plains Township (Luzerne County), Smithfield Township (Monroe County), and Montgomery Township have all taken the same step — self-declaring their ordinances invalid as to data centers and racing to adopt curative amendments before a developer beats them to a validity challenge. Townships that wait for the lawsuit lose control of where the use ends up; townships that act first keep it.

What a Comprehensive Ordinance Should Cover

• Define and separately regulate all four converging uses — data centers, gas/coal-fired generating facilities, utility-scale solar, and BESS — with tailored standards for setbacks, screening, height, noise, fire-safety access, water use, emissions, and decommissioning security.
• Identify preferred siting areas for each use — industrial land and brownfields for data centers and thermal generation; marginal farmland, brownfields, and land near substations/transmission for solar and storage — through the comprehensive plan, so land use and grid needs align rather than conflict.
• Add a “use not provided for” clause to close the exclusionary-zoning gap for any use your ordinance doesn’t yet name. A sound approach: default undefined uses that are primarily residential in character to your multi-family residential district(s), and default undefined uses that are primarily commercial or industrial in character to your industrial district(s), each subject to conditional use or special exception review.
• Coordinate with your utility and PJM interconnection data so zoning maps reflect actual grid opportunity, not guesswork, for both generation and large-load users.
• Build predictable, timely review processes — and consider a Section 609.2 curative amendment proactively — to capture tax revenue and host agreements rather than losing projects, or a validity challenge, to a better-prepared neighboring jurisdiction.
• Revisit ordinances regularly — interconnection reform means this pipeline of data center, generation, and storage proposals is only accelerating.

Know the Limits of Your Zoning Power

Even the best ordinance cannot reach everything. Facilities regulated by FERC or the PA PUC — interstate gas pipelines, high-voltage transmission lines, and substations — are generally exempt from local zoning under federal and state preemption. FERC holds exclusive siting authority over interstate pipelines under the Natural Gas Act; Pennsylvania courts have long held public utilities’ transmission facilities are not subject to municipal zoning as to use, siting, or construction (Duquesne Light Co. v. Upper St. Clair Township, 377 Pa. 323 (1954)). The MPC codifies a parallel path: under Section 619 (53 P.S. § 10619), a utility can obtain a PUC finding that a facility is “reasonably necessary for the convenience and welfare of the public,” exempting it from local zoning. In short: regulate the data center, plant, solar array, or BESS as a land use — but not the pipeline or transmission line/substation connecting it to the grid.

Don’t Wait on Nuclear to Bail You Out

Some officials hope a new generation of nuclear power will make all of this moot. The data says otherwise: the PUC’s own study does not model any new nuclear capacity coming online until 2040 — the final year of the study’s horizon. Small modular reactors, the technology most often cited as the next wave, aren’t assumed buildable until that same year. That’s a generation away. Data centers, gas and coal plants, solar, and battery storage, by contrast, are being proposed, sited, and interconnected right now. Township land use policy needs to be built for the uses arriving this decade, not the ones that might arrive in the next.

The Bottom Line

Pennsylvania’s grid reliability challenge is real, independently documented, and driven by data-center growth already reshaping local economies statewide. The generation, storage, and large-load facilities needed to meet it have to go somewhere — and Pennsylvania townships are already being forced into curative amendments to catch up. Townships that adopt comprehensive rules for data centers, power plants, solar, and BESS — with a “use not provided for” safety valve and a clear-eyed understanding of what FERC and PUC preemption puts off-limits — will shape where this development goes and capture its economic benefits on their own terms. Townships that wait will be reacting to decisions made by others, or by a zoning hearing board, on someone else’s timeline.