North Brunswick NJ data center ban (2026)
North Brunswick, NJ — Municipal Data Center Ban (August 25, 2026)
North Brunswick, NJ · Twp. of North Brunswick, N.J. — Data Center Ban (Aug. 25, 2026)
- Status
- In effect
- Took effect
- August 25, 2026
- Applies to
- Developers seeking to site data centers in North Brunswick; township planning and zoning officials.
- Enforced by
- North Brunswick Township planning and zoning / Township Council
North Brunswick banned data centers on August 25, 2026, one of three New Jersey municipalities to do so the same night alongside East Brunswick and Stafford Township. The three became the 35th, 36th and 37th municipalities in New Jersey to prohibit the facilities. North Brunswick was the 35th. Advocates described three bans passing in a single night as a marker of how fast the movement had spread across the state, with rural, suburban and urban communities alike citing the electricity and water demands of data centers, pollution, infrastructure strain, and the small number of permanent jobs the facilities create relative to their footprint. North Brunswick is in Middlesex County, in the central New Jersey corridor along Route 1 between New Brunswick and Princeton.
Who is protected: North Brunswick residents, through a municipal prohibition on data centers.
Legal detail
Township of North Brunswick, N.J. — municipal data center ban adopted August 25, 2026. Recorded as the 35th New Jersey municipality to prohibit data centers, adopted the same night as East Brunswick (36th) and Stafford Township (37th). DETAIL GAP ACKNOWLEDGED: available reporting establishes that North Brunswick banned data centers on that date and its position in the statewide sequence, but does not supply the ordinance number, the zoning mechanism used (prohibited-use section versus removal from zone schedules), the definition adopted, or the vote tally — all of which ARE available for its two same-night counterparts. This entry is therefore thinner than the Stafford Township and East Brunswick entries by necessity, not by choice. Statewide context: New Jersey's municipal response to data centers has been dominated by outright permanent prohibitions rather than the time-limited moratoriums that lead in most other states, with more than 50 municipalities having banned the use by late August 2026 and over a million residents living under such a ban.
Key facts
| Jurisdiction | North Brunswick, NJ |
|---|---|
| Level | City / local |
| Strength | Stronger |
| Enacted | August 25, 2026 |
| Citation | Twp. of North Brunswick, N.J. — Data Center Ban (Aug. 25, 2026) |
| Private right of action | No, agency enforcement only |
| Penalties | Data centers are a prohibited use |
| Topics | data-center siting and energy · government use of AI |
| News report | North Brunswick, East Brunswick, and Stafford Township ban data centers — ROI-NJ |
Related data-center siting and energy rules elsewhere
- Superior WI Data Center Moratorium (1-year) · In effect
- Dane County WI Hyperscale Data Center Moratorium · In effect
- Madison WI Data Center Moratorium (1-year) · In effect
- Manitowoc County WI Data Center Moratorium · In effect
- WA SB 5982 (Data Center / Clean Energy) · In effect
- Dayton OH data center moratorium (180-day, Apr 2026) · In effect
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