Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill into law Thursday to regulate large-scale data centers in Florida, promising that consumers would not bear the burden of the artificial intelligence boom with higher electric bills or more scarce water resources.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou should not, as a hard-working Floridian, have to subsidize some of the wealthiest companies in the history of humanity,\u201d DeSantis said at a Lakeland news conference shortly before he signed the bill.<\/p>\n
He said he believed this was the first law of its kind in the country.<\/p>\n
DeSantis had called for guardrails on the data center industry before this year\u2019s legislative session, carving out a populist position on a topic that has united voters across the political spectrum against what they see as exploitive Big Tech projects. The projects often pop up in rural parts of the state with more open land, where residents have grown increasingly skeptical of the data center industry\u2019s promises of high-paying jobs.<\/p>\n
Just so far this year, residents have banded together to oppose data center proposals in Citrus<\/a>, Polk<\/a> and Okeechobee<\/a> counties.<\/p>\n Senate Bill 484 requires that local water management districts deny permits to data centers \u201cif the proposed use of the water is harmful to the water resources of the area,\u201d and mandates the use of reclaimed water where possible.<\/p>\n DeSantis mentioned Florida\u2019s ongoing drought<\/a> Thursday, saying it only emphasizes how precious the resource is.<\/p>\n \u201cHow are you gonna say that somehow the water can go to data centers when we need the water for our own people?\u201d<\/p>\n When it comes to electricity, the legislation also requires that any data center \u201cbears its own full cost of service and that such cost is not shifted\u201d to the public.<\/p>\n Earlier versions of the bill had stronger consumer protections. After pressure from the business lobby, though, lawmakers stripped out a ban on government employees signing nondisclosure agreements<\/a> with data center developers. The change allows for greater public secrecy surrounding the projects.<\/p>\n Large-scale data centers are warehouses that contain thousands of computers used to power programs like AI. They can siphon huge amounts of water to keep the machines cool and can stretch for hundreds of acres. The new law\u2019s protections kick in for any data center that consumes at least 50 megawatts of electricity at peak usage. The largest operations, sometimes called \u201chyperscalers,\u201d can devour more than 100 megawatts continuously.<\/p>\n No hyperscale data centers have been built yet in Florida, but the industry has been eyeing the state for expansion.<\/p>\n \u2022 \u2022 \u2022<\/p>\n