Data center laws in Maine
2 rules at the state level: 2 statutes. Each says what it requires in the words of its text, with the effective date the text gives and a link to the bill or order.
Last verified
- Rules on the record
- 2
- Passed
- 2
- Statutes
- 2
Rules in Maine
- L.D. 713 Statute
An Act to Exclude Data Centers from the Business Equipment Tax Exemption and the Dirigo Business Incentives Program and to Require the Department of Economic and Community Development to Study Financial Incentives for Data Centers
Passed
L.D. 713 of the 132nd Legislature was signed on April 14, 2026. The legislature titles it: An Act to Exclude Data Centers from the Business Equipment Tax Exemption and the Dirigo Business Incentives Program and to Require the Department of Economic and...
L.D. 713 of the 132nd Legislature was signed on April 14, 2026. The legislature titles it: An Act to Exclude Data Centers from the Business Equipment Tax Exemption and the Dirigo Business Incentives Program and to Require the Department of Economic and Community Development to Study Financial Incentives for Data Centers.
What it requires
Property in a data center, or in the part of a facility that is one, which begins operations on or after August 1, 2026 is no longer eligible for the business equipment tax exemption, and that includes property added by a later expansion.
Property in a data center, or in the part of a facility that is one, which begins operations on or after August 1, 2026 is no longer eligible for the business equipment tax exemption, and that includes property added by a later expansion. A business that is a data center beginning operations on or after that date cannot take the Dirigo Business Incentives credit, and software publishing, data processing and computer design work done at a data center no longer counts as a qualifying activity for that credit. Beginning operations means the data center has its computer and networking equipment running and is processing or storing data or providing similar computing services; construction, site preparation and installing equipment do not count. The Department of Economic and Community Development must study what state incentives data centers can reach and report with suggested legislation to the Legislature's taxation committee no later than November 4, 2026. The act sets no size or load threshold.
- L.D. 912 Statute
An Act to Limit the Amount of Electricity That May Be Provided to Data Centers on a Certain Commercial or Industrial Site
Passed
L.D. 912 of the 132nd Legislature was signed on May 21, 2025. The legislature titles it: An Act to Limit the Amount of Electricity That May Be Provided to Data Centers on a Certain Commercial or Industrial Site.
What it requires
The act narrows which consumers a private generator may serve without being regulated as a transmission and distribution utility.
The act narrows which consumers a private generator may serve without being regulated as a transmission and distribution utility. It adds an exception for commercial or industrial consumers on a site inside the New England system operator's control area, in a municipality north of the Town of Chester, that the generator or its predecessor served before December 31, 2018 without using a public utility's wires. That exception is lost where more than 25 percent of the generator's nameplate capacity is used to serve data centers on that site. A data center here is any facility in the State, standing alone or inside a larger building, that mainly holds electronic equipment used to process, store and transmit digital information and uses environmental control equipment to keep the conditions that equipment needs.
A law here is one statute, utility commission order, tariff, tax rule, moratorium or bill at the state level. What it requires is taken from the text, never summarized from coverage; a date the text does not give is left empty. Its status is one of five, defined on the laws index. The dated events beneath a law are the scorecard entries that cite it.
Bills tracked
No official summary on file for any of these 3 bills; each links to the legislature's page for the text.
Failed or died 1
3 bills tracked in Maine; 132nd Legislature, legislature adjourned. No data center bills found as of October 26, 2026. Search terms: data center, data centre, large load, hyperscale, computing facility, server farm, high load factor (indirect), energy intensive facility (indirect), large electric load (indirect), digital asset mining (indirect), cryptocurrency mining (indirect), qualified technology facility (indirect), colocation (indirect), moratorium (with another term), sales tax exemption (with another term). The search on LegiScan. (opens in a new tab)
Bill data from LegiScan (opens in a new tab), licensed CC BY 4.0 (opens in a new tab). The record chooses the bills, writes each stage in its own words and cites the legislature's own page for every bill. LegiScan is credited as the finder; the citation is the legislature's own page. How bills and votes are recorded.
Cite this page
Data Center Record, "Data center laws in Maine", https://datacenterrecord.org/laws/me. Data: Data Center Record, datacenterrecord.org, CC BY-NC 4.0.
The structured rows are CC BY-NC 4.0. Link to this page; that is what turns a reuse into a citation. Prose stays under copyright.
