New York moved closer toward becoming the first US state to enact a moratorium on large datacenters this week. On Thursday, the state legislature approved a one-year ban on the facilities powering the AI boom.<\/p>\n
The measure now heads to Kathy Hochul, the governor, who will decide whether to sign it into law. The Guardian spoke to a state senator in the wake of the historic vote about authoring the bill and the wider US backlash against datacenters.<\/p>\n
Thursday\u2019s vote comes as anger toward datacenters, and AI<\/a>, sweeps the nation. Almost three-quarters of Americans oppose a datacenter project being built near their homes, according to a new Heatmap poll<\/a>. Many local communities across the country, including in New<\/a> York<\/a>, have already enacted a patchwork of moratoriums on datacenters. But some residents are feeling overwhelmed by the pace and secrecy of development \u2013 and they\u2019re calling on state governments for help.<\/p>\n Kristen Gonzalez, a New York state senator, Kristen Gonzalez wanted to buy her state some time. She co-authored a bill that would temporarily ban \u201chyperscale\u201d datacenters over 20MW.<\/p>\n \u201cBig tech has been used to writing their own rules, or not having rules that they have to play by, when it comes to new technology,\u201d Gonzalez says. \u201cThis is one of the first times that we\u2019re really drawing a line in the sand and saying that as a state legislature, we have the responsibility to make sure that New Yorkers are in the driver\u2019s seat.\u201d<\/p>\n How would New York\u2019s temporary ban on datacenters work?<\/p>\n The moratorium largely targets datacenters built by \u201ctech goliaths\u201d and will not apply to facilities already possessing the necessary state permits, Gonzalez says. She notes that currently, there are at least 28 large data centers being evaluated by the state for their impact on the grid and that they would \u201cadd an additional 9,682MW of energy onto the state\u2019s already constrained and aging grid\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cWe should not have to sacrifice our water, our energy, our green space and local communities for big tech and specifically for generative AI, which is oftentimes used for things like AI slop,\u201d Gonzalez says. Gonzalez says she introduced the bill after hearing from concerned New Yorkers and a coalition of environmental justice advocates.<\/p>\n Kristen Gonzales, a New York state senator, co-authored the bill for a moratorium on datacenters in the state. Composite: Getty Images<\/p>\n In addition to imposing a one-year moratorium, the bill would also require an environmental impact report, which would document water and electricity usage, as well as new labor, energy efficiency and transparency standards, and ratepayer protections aimed at keeping New Yorkers\u2019 energy bills low.<\/p>\n The original proposal included a three-year pause on datacenter development but was reduced to one year as a compromise.<\/p>\n A part of a nationwide pushback<\/p>\n More than a dozen US states have considered<\/a> moratoria in response to residents\u2019 fears about the potential costs of living next to datacenters, especially higher utility bills<\/a> and negative environmental impacts<\/a>. Only Maine got as close as New York in hitting pause, with the legislature passing a temporary ban \u2013 but in April, its governor vetoed <\/a>the measure.<\/p>\n New York\u2019s moratorium bill is still awaiting the governor\u2019s signature. Her office has said she will review<\/a> the legislation. While Hochul has previously dismissed a statewide approach<\/a> to regulating datacenters, she has advocated for protecting New Yorkers from taking on additional energy costs<\/a> driven by datacenters.<\/p>\n The Data Center Coalition, a trade association that has championed the expansion of these facilities, worries that a statewide moratorium would \u201cdiscourage further investment, undermine New York\u2019s economy, and send a signal that the state is closed for business\u201d. Datacenters are the backbone of New Yorkers\u2019 digital economy, powering everything from remote work and telemedicine to e-commerce and education, the group says.<\/p>\n The scene in Albany<\/p>\n In Thursday\u2019s debate on the legislative floor in the state capital of Albany, lawmakers against the ban echoed industry worries that it was a one-size-fits-all measure that would stifle economic growth and supersede local control. \u201cWe shouldn\u2019t be imposing blanket moratoriums that punish every community in the state for a problem that may not be universal,\u201d said Paul Bologna, a New York state assemblymember. \u201cWe should be letting markets and local governments drive this policy, not fear and environmental overreach in Albany.\u201d<\/p>\n Gonzalez disagrees with that approach. \u201cIt\u2019s an abdication of our responsibility to ask a local government to engage and take on the wealthiest companies in the world. That is what state government is for,\u201d she says. \u201cThis notion that we can let these local governments take on tech goliaths and assume that everything will beOK is, for me, very misguided.\u201d<\/p>\n Cheryl Cordes, a resident of rural Genesee county, is watching Albany closely. For months, Cordes \u2013 a retired nurse who has lived in the town of Alabama, New York, for more than four decades \u2013 has been trying to pressure her local government to stop developers from building a massive datacenter campus<\/a> just over half a mile away from her home. \u201cThey\u2019re trying to shove this datacenter down our throats,\u201d she says. Cordes is worried about potentially harmful health effects from the noise, as well as disruptions to the nearby habitat of all sorts of birds: bald eagles, trumpeter swans, Canadian geese and snowy owls. She has knocked on dozens of doors in her town to survey residents and recalls one neighbor telling her: \u201cIf my electric bill goes up another $50 I can\u2019t live here.\u201d<\/p>\n Cordes hopes Hochul approves the moratorium. \u201cThese regulations have to come from above,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m not a person who\u2019s about big government \u2013 but come on: please help us here in these small rural towns.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York moved closer toward becoming the first US state to enact a moratorium on large datacenters this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":720836,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[64,63,137,500],"class_list":["post-720835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-health","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=720835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720835\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/720836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=720835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=720835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=720835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}