Indianapolis Data Center Moratorium: Who Pays for the Grid Buildout?

The Indianapolis City-County Council has advanced a proposed moratorium that would pause approval of new data center developments in Marion County through the end of 2027. It still has additional steps before it takes effect and explicitly exempts three already-approved projects (DC Blox, Metrobloks, and Sabey Corp.) giving those operators a first-mover regulatory advantage.

Here is what matters for you as an Indiana manufacturer. Citizens Action Coalition has documented that NIPSCO residential bills jumped 26.7% in a single year, and CenterPoint rose 24.9%. Absent a large-load tariff structure, infrastructure costs flow through general rate cases that land on industrial customers. Indiana has not finalized large-load tariffs with take-or-pay floors for hyperscale customers. That means manufacturers on NIPSCO and AES Indiana grids currently have no structural firewall against absorbing data center grid buildout costs through those rate cases.

The moratorium's carve-outs will likely accelerate permitting applications to surrounding counties (Hendricks, Hamilton, Johnson) before Indianapolis-style restrictions spread. The concrete question for your operation: do you know whether your utility has filed, or plans to file, a large-load tariff structure with the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission that would isolate those infrastructure costs from your bill? If not, that is the call to make this week.