Boulder County planning staff have drafted rules that would cap new data centers at 75 kilowatts of power, a threshold officials say is low enough to keep standalone facilities from ever locating in the county's unincorporated areas. The proposal would also confine any data center use to existing light industrial and general industrial zoning districts, leaving most of the county's rural and residential land off-limits entirely.
County planning staff told The Colorado Sun that the proposed limits mean standalone data centers won't be coming to Boulder County. Staff explained the goal is to fence new facilities into those two industrial zoning categories rather than allow them to spread into other parts of unincorporated Boulder County, according to the same report.
Despite the practical effect of keeping large operators out, the 75-kilowatt number wasn't picked to zero out the industry. Planning staff said it was designed to allow for adequate computing power that may be required as an incidental or internal demand within an existing business, per the Sun's reporting — meaning a company running server equipment alongside its regular operations could still do so without triggering the stricter data-center rules.
What 75 Kilowatts Actually Looks Like
To put the proposed threshold in perspective, the county estimated that a data center running at that level would draw about as much electricity each day as 50 to 60 average Colorado homes, according to the Longmont Leader. That's a far cry from the industrial-scale facilities popping up elsewhere in the state and country, where power draws are measured in megawatts rather than kilowatts.
The Longmont Leader also notes the proposed regulations wouldn't directly apply to incorporated municipalities such as Longmont, Boulder or Louisville, since those cities set their own land-use rules. The push for clearer standards stems partly from a gap in the existing code: Boulder County's Land Use Code does not specifically define data centers or establish clear standards governing their size and location, per the outlet's reporting.
Bigger Facilities, Bigger Fights, Elsewhere
Boulder County's cautious approach stands in contrast to how some neighboring jurisdictions are handling the same pressure. Larimer County's draft rules, still out for public comment, would block any data centers drawing over 30 megawatts, ban evaporative cooling that wastes water, require renewable sources for the needed electricity, and prohibit converting agricultural land, the Sun reported. A Larimer County official framed that approach as a middle path, saying there is a role for data centers in the local economy, but at a smaller scale.
Not every jurisdiction is landing on compromise. Aurora's City Council again rejected a data center moratorium this past week after what the Sun described as a raucous public meeting where dozens of speakers demanded a ban. And in Georgia, Dade County commissioners unanimously approved a 90-day moratorium on new data center development on Nov. 5, according to the Times Free Press, after an Atlanta-based company began exploring a 300-megawatt facility in the county.
The scale of what's being proposed in Colorado Springs underscores just how much bigger some projects can get: the Sun reported that a proposed facility there may draw up to 50 megawatts of power, a figure that dwarfs the kilowatt-level cap Boulder County staff have floated for unincorporated land. Meanwhile, state lawmakers are circulating potential language on tighter data center regulation for a bill in the 2027 session, after competing data center bills failed in the 2026 session, per the Sun.
The Open Question Over Definitions
At the state level, the debate isn't purely about restriction. In Ohio, coverage from the Ohio Statehouse News Bureau captured the tension in its own headline: voters pushed back on data centers, but a business group says Ohio rakes in revenue from them — a reminder that the fight over these facilities nationally is as much about economic upside as it is about power grids and water tables.
Back in Boulder County, a project page from the county's planning department, last updated June 15, describes draft options that would define data centers and establish them as a general industrial use permitted through Limited Impact Special Review in Light Industrial and General Industrial zoning districts, according to Boulder County's planning department. That framework matches the broader direction described in both the Sun's and the Leader's reporting, though it reflects draft options rather than a finalized code amendment.
