Indiana Data Center Moratorium 2027 Odds & Analysis
Will Indiana pass a statewide data center moratorium? Prediction market odds say probably not soon, but the longer the clock runs, the less certain traders become. As of October 2026, the market prices a statewide moratorium enacted by December 31, 2026 at 3.1%, by June 30, 2027 at 8.5%, by December 31, 2027 at 10.5%, and by December 31, 2028 at 29.5%. Those numbers sit on top of a striking local backlash: dozens of Indiana counties and the city of Indianapolis have paused new data center approvals in 2026, while the state government has so far left the question to local communities. The key insight is not the level of any single rung but the shape of the ladder. The board opened near coin-flip territory in late September, collapsed within days, and now concentrates almost all of its remaining probability in 2028 rather than in the 2027 legislative session. You can take a leveraged position on any of these four dates on PredMart, which lists the market alongside its other event contracts.
This analysis walks through what the contract actually requires, where each rung is priced and why, which rung is moving, and the dated catalysts that will reprice the board over the next two years.
What the market asks, and why the fine print matters
The market resolves Yes only if the State of Indiana enacts a law or constitutional provision establishing a statewide moratorium on new data centers. A qualifying measure has to prohibit or suspend by default the approval, permitting, construction, grid interconnection, or operation of all new data centers, or of a subset that includes every new facility with more than 100 MW of interconnection capacity. Exemptions for specific projects or signed agreements are allowed, as long as the default rule is a pause rather than "allowed with conditions."
Three exclusions shape the odds more than any headline does.
First, local moratoriums do not count. Indiana now has a patchwork of county and city pauses, and none of them moves this market directly. They matter only as political pressure on the General Assembly.
Second, suspending tax incentives alone does not count. That matters because the most active state-level debate in Indiana, and in several other states, is about the sales and use tax exemption for data center equipment rather than an outright pause. A state that froze new data center tax exemptions for several years, for example, would not resolve an equivalent market to Yes.
Third, executive orders do not count. Governor Mike Braun cannot resolve this market with a signature on an order; it needs a statute, a veto override, a bill becoming law without signature, or a voter-approved constitutional measure. The resolution date is the date of enactment, not the date the law takes effect.
Put together, the contract requires the Republican-controlled General Assembly to pass, and the governor to sign or allow, a binding statewide pause. That is a much narrower target than "Indiana gets tougher on data centers."
The base rate: no state has done this yet
As of early October 2026, no U.S. state has enacted a statewide data center moratorium, according to a state-by-state tracker of moratorium legislation published October 8. The closest any state came was Maine. The Maine legislature passed LD 307, which would have paused data centers larger than 20 MW until November 2027, but Governor Janet Mills vetoed it in April 2026, objecting that it did not exempt a locally supported project in the town of Jay. The House vote after the veto was 72-65, short of the two-thirds needed to override, according to the Maine Morning Star.
Other states have stopped short of statute. New York and Texas have used executive orders to hold back some permits or grid approvals, which would not count under this contract, and moratorium bills in several other states died when their 2026 sessions ended, according to the same tracker.
That base rate is the single strongest argument for the low prices on the near-term rungs. A first-in-the-nation statewide moratorium would be a major policy break, and the one legislature that passed one could not get it past its own governor.
Front-runner: the December 31, 2028 rung at 29.5%
The longest-dated outcome is the only one priced as a realistic possibility. As of October 2026, "by December 31, 2028" trades at 29.5%, with the order book quoted roughly 29% bid and 30% ask. It is also the thinnest rung on the board: it was added on October 1, two days after the other three, and carries about $61,000 of liquidity against roughly $474,000 on the December 2027 rung.
The case for this rung is time and politics. A 2028 deadline covers two full Indiana legislative sessions: the long budget session that opens in early January 2027 and the short session in early 2028. It also sits after the November 2026 general election, which elects the whole Indiana House and half of the Senate, and it gives the local backlash two more years to work its way up to the Statehouse.
That local backlash is real and still growing. As of mid-July 2026, at least 17 Indiana counties had temporary data center moratoriums and two, Marshall and Cass, had banned new data centers outright, according to Indiana Public Media. By late August, Indiana University's Environmental Resilience Institute counted 40 counties with some form of data center regulation, including 24 with temporary construction moratoria and three with bans, Monroe County among them, according to Indiana Public Media. In the largest jurisdiction, the Indianapolis City-County Council approved a moratorium 23-1 on August 10, and the Metropolitan Development Commission enacted it 6-0 on August 19. It runs through December 31, 2027 and exempts three projects that had already been approved.
The scale of the buildout explains why. The same institute counted 38 operational data centers in Indiana and 37 more planned or under construction at the start of 2026, and projected that their electricity use could rise from about 1% of statewide demand in 2025 to more than 6% by 2030.
The case against is that every signal from the people who control the outcome points toward local control and conditions, not a statewide pause. Braun said in late July that each county and community should make its own decision, adding that for small counties hosting a data center "would definitely lower property taxes." His press secretary, Griffin Reid, later said the state is not there to "tell local communities what to do," according to The Bond Buyer. Braun's office has instead set three conditions for new projects: hire Hoosiers, generate 100% of the energy the facility uses, and have community support. In July he also joined other governors in signing a federal pledge on protecting utility customers from data center costs. That is a ratepayer-protection posture, not a moratorium posture.
The legislature's own record points the same way. In the 2026 session, HB 1333, which would have conditioned and limited the data center tax exemption, passed the House 54-45 but died without a hearing in the Senate Utilities Committee. Its revenue-sharing idea was folded into HEA 1210, signed March 12, 2026, which lets a host county or city require a quarterly payment of up to 1% of the state sales tax a data center does not pay on its electricity. Other 2026 bills on water permits, electricity reporting and rate protections died without hearings, according to a policy tracker that follows Indiana data center legislation. None of those bills was a moratorium. The state's response so far has been to share revenue and shift costs, not to stop construction.
At 29.5%, the 2028 rung implies something close to a one-in-three chance that this pattern breaks within about 26 months. That is a meaningful bet on political change rather than on the current trajectory.
Biggest mover: the 2028 rung nearly doubled in a week
The sharpest recent move on the board belongs to that same rung. After opening around 47.5% on October 2, the December 2028 contract fell to about 15% by October 3 and drifted near 14.5% through October 8. On October 9 it jumped to about 27.5%, slipped back to 21.5%, and was trading near 29.5% on October 11, a gain of roughly 14 points over the week.
We could not find a specific Indiana news event on October 8 or 9 that explains the jump. The most notable Indiana data center story that day was local: on October 9, WFYI reported that Indianapolis had formed a $300,000 study committee, led by the planning firm MKSK with Indiana University's Environmental Resilience Institute as primary research partner, to draft new zoning rules, with a proposed ordinance expected toward the end of summer 2027. That is a city process, and it signals that Indianapolis expects to regulate rather than wait for a statewide ban.
The more likely explanation is structure. With about $61,000 of liquidity, a few determined buyers can move the 2028 price by double digits without any new information, and the December 2027 rung briefly spiked to 14.5% on October 8 before falling back to 10.5%, which suggests one or more traders were testing size across the longer-dated dates. For a trader, the takeaway is that the 2028 price is the least reliable signal on the board and the most volatile. For context on the leverage angle, a move like 14.5% to 29.5% is roughly a doubling of the contract value, which on a 4x leveraged position would be roughly a fourfold gain on margin before fees and interest, and the same volatility in reverse can liquidate a leveraged position quickly.
The other notable move is the collapse across the whole board in its first week. The December 2027 rung opened near 53.5% on September 30 and was at about 9.5% by October 4. The June 2027 rung went from 36.5% to 8.5% over the same days, and the December 2026 rung slid from 14% to under 4%. Opening prices on new markets are often set by thin early books, so the sell-off reads more like price discovery than a reaction to news. The traders who arrived after launch looked at the base rate, the governor's local-control stance and the Senate's track record, and repriced the near-term dates toward a low single-digit to low double-digit range.
The rest of the field: the near-term rungs
December 31, 2026 at 3.1%. The Indiana General Assembly is not in regular session for the rest of 2026, so a Yes here would require Braun to call a special session and lawmakers to pass a moratorium before New Year's Eve. There is a recent precedent for an autumn special session, but it is not encouraging for this outcome: in late 2025 the governor pushed for a special session on mid-decade congressional redistricting, and on December 11, 2025 the Senate voted 31-19 against the House-passed map, with 21 Republicans joining all 10 Democrats. A governor who is publicly defending local control on data centers has given no sign of calling lawmakers back for a statewide pause. The 3.1% price, quoted around 2.9% bid and 3.3% ask, is mostly a tail premium; after hovering between 4% and 4.5% for most of the past week, it dropped to near 3% on October 11.
June 30, 2027 at 8.5%. This rung effectively asks whether a moratorium passes in the 2027 long session. Indiana's odd-year session is the budget session, which begins in early January and, under state law, must wrap up by late April. That gives a bill a realistic window of about four months, with committee deadlines in between. The obstacles are well documented: the Senate Utilities Committee did not even hear the 2026 tax-exemption bill, and leadership in both chambers has prioritized affordability and ratepayer measures. For 8.5% to pay off, a moratorium bill would need to be filed, given a hearing, pass both Republican supermajorities and be signed or allowed by a governor whose office says the state should not dictate local choices.
December 31, 2027 at 10.5%. This is the most heavily traded rung, with about $2.3 million in volume out of roughly $3.4 million on the whole event. Its price is only 2 points above the June 2027 rung, which is consistent with the calendar: there is no regular session between May and December 2027, so almost all of the probability of a 2027 enactment is concentrated in the spring session. The extra 2 points cover a possible special session later in the year.
The most interesting relationship on the board is the gap between this rung and the 2028 rung. The market prices about 10.5% for an enactment by the end of 2027 and 29.5% by the end of 2028, which implies roughly 19 points of probability for an enactment during calendar 2028 alone. The 2028 session is the short, non-budget session, which usually runs only until mid-March and comes in an election year. The market is effectively saying that a short 2028 session is almost twice as likely to deliver a moratorium as the full 2027 session. There are arguments for that view: a new legislature seated after the November 2026 election, two more years of local fights over power bills and water, and the possibility that another state goes first and makes the idea less radical. But it is also the kind of internal gap that tends to close as the thin 2028 book attracts more liquidity, either by the 2028 rung falling or the 2027 rungs rising.
Where is the cheapest exposure? If you believe the local wave will eventually force the Statehouse to act, the June and December 2027 rungs offer the most direct and liquid way to express it, since an early enactment would also pay on every later rung. If you believe the state will keep choosing revenue sharing and ratepayer rules over a pause, the No side of the 2028 rung is the most expensive-looking piece of the board. One leverage-specific point: a low-priced Yes contract like the 8.5% June 2027 rung has the most asymmetric payoff per dollar on the board, and on PredMart's 4x maximum that asymmetry grows, but so does the speed at which slow decay toward zero erodes the margin behind it.
Catalysts: the windows to watch
November 3, 2026, general election. All 100 Indiana House seats and half of the Senate are on the ballot. The partisan balance is very unlikely to flip, but the candidates who win, and how many of them campaigned on data centers, power bills or water, will shape the 2027 session agenda. Watch for any statewide candidate or legislative leader endorsing a statewide pause; none has done so in the reporting we reviewed.
Through 2026 and 2027, utility rate cases and studies. SEA 240 from the 2026 session directs a study by the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission on unused interconnection capacity, with a report due in 2027, and the commission is reconsidering a $71 million AES Indiana rate increase, according to The Bond Buyer. Any finding that large loads are pushing up residential bills would strengthen the case for a pause, though evidence like that is more likely to lead to rate rules than to a moratorium.
November 2026 to January 2027, bill filing. Organization Day in November and the January start of the 2027 session are when bills appear. A moratorium bill with a Republican author, especially a committee chair, would be a much stronger signal than a Democratic bill, given the supermajorities. The absence of a filed bill by the end of January would be strong evidence for the No side on the June 2027 rung.
January to April 2027, the long session. Hearings in the House and Senate utilities committees and the first-house and second-house deadlines are the hard checkpoints. A bill that does not get a committee hearing in its first house by the deadline is effectively dead for the year, which would push the June and December 2027 rungs toward zero.
Through 2027, local expirations and renewals. Boone County's one-year moratorium runs through June 15, 2027, and the Indianapolis pause runs through December 31, 2027. Whether these are renewed, replaced with zoning ordinances, or allowed to lapse will show whether local governments see a pause as a bridge to regulation or as a permanent stance. Indianapolis expects to propose its new zoning rules around late summer 2027.
Other states. If New York, Virginia or another state actually enacts a statewide pause in 2027, it would remove Indiana's first-mover problem and probably lift every rung. A repeat of Maine's veto elsewhere would do the opposite.
January to March 2028, the short session. This is the session that the 29.5% price is really betting on. It comes after an election, with less floor time and no budget, so any moratorium would likely need to arrive with leadership support already in place.
Bottom line
Indiana is one of the clearest examples in the country of a local data center backlash: dozens of counties and the state's largest city have paused approvals in 2026. But this market does not pay on local action, tax-incentive changes, or executive orders. It pays only on a statewide statute, and the people who would have to write and sign that statute have so far chosen revenue sharing, ratepayer protection and local control. No state has enacted such a law, and the only legislature that passed one was overruled by its own governor.
On that evidence, the near-term rungs look fairly priced to slightly rich: 3.1% for 2026 is a special-session tail, and 8.5% to 10.5% for the 2027 session reflects a real but low chance that the local wave reaches the Statehouse quickly. The 2028 rung at 29.5% is the outlier. It sits on the thinnest book, it doubled in a week without an identifiable news trigger, and it implies a short, election-year session is much more productive than a full budget session. Our read is that a statewide moratorium by the end of 2028 is plausible but less likely than the current price suggests, and that the gap between the 2027 and 2028 rungs is the most important thing to watch as liquidity arrives. Whichever side of that gap you take, a leveraged position lets you size the view to your conviction, as long as you leave room for the volatility this thin rung has already shown.
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