New York Is the Latest State to Consider a Data Center Pause

Two New York lawmakers connected Friday announced that they are introducing a measure that would enforce a three-year moratorium connected information halfway development. The announcement makes New York astatine slightest the sixth authorities to present authorities putting a intermission connected information halfway improvement successful the past fewer weeks—one of the latest signs of a increasing and bipartisan backlash that is rapidly uncovering traction successful statehouses astir the country.

Data halfway moratoriums are “being tested arsenic a exemplary passim states successful this country,” said authorities legislator Liz Krueger, a Democrat, who presented the measure astatine a property league Friday with its cosponsor, assemblymember Anna Kelles, besides a Democrat. “Democrats and Republicans are moving guardant with precisely these kinds of moratoriums. New York should beryllium successful the beforehand of the enactment to get this done.”

The caller measure comes arsenic a question of bipartisan anti-data halfway sentiment that has swept crossed the state successful caller months. In December, Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent, became the archetypal nationalist person to telephone for a broad moratorium connected information halfway permitting, saying that a moratorium would “ensure that the benefits of exertion enactment for each of us, not conscionable the 1 percent.”

Just a time earlier the New York measure was introduced, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida sharply criticized information centers astatine a roundtable connected AI policy. DeSantis had antecedently projected authorities that would connection a assortment of user protections and bounds the enlargement of information centers successful Florida.

“I don’t deliberation there’s precise galore radical who privation to person higher vigor bills conscionable truthful immoderate chatbot tin corrupt immoderate 13-year-old kid online,” deSantis said astatine the roundtable, to applause. “That’s not what anybody is signing up for.”

New York presently has much than 130 information centers, with respective large-scale projects—including a 450-megawatt task sited connected an aged ember plant—proposed oregon nether construction. One of the state’s utilities said determination is presently 10 gigawatts of electrical demand, chiefly driven by information centers, successful enactment to beryllium connected to the grid; that request tripled successful conscionable 1 year. These projects are colliding with mounting concerns implicit impacts from information centers connected the electrical grid, biology worries, and whether oregon not consumers would beryllium footing the bill. Last month, arsenic portion of a larger acceptable of actions intended to support ratepayers from precocious vigor costs, New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, launched a caller inaugural to amended interconnection and grid upgrades portion requiring information centers to “pay their just share.”

In aboriginal December, days earlier Sanders’s telephone for a nationalist moratorium, much than 200 nationalist and section biology groups from astir the state convened by biology radical Food and Water Watch signed connected to a missive asking members of Congress to walk a nationalist moratorium connected information halfway development, calling information halfway enlargement and the AI roar “one of of the biggest biology and societal threats of our generation.”

The New York measure was “our idea,” says Eric Weltman, the elder strategist and organizer for Food and Water Watch’s New York chapter. The measure imposes astatine slightest a three-year moratorium connected issuing permits for caller information centers. During this time, the Department of Environmental Conservation and the Public Service Commission indispensable contented reports connected the impacts of information centers connected the nationalist and the environment, and suggest caller regulations oregon orders to minimize impacts.

“There are a batch of extraordinarily well-intentioned and well-meaning bills that person been introduced to effort to code the galore impacts that information centers have,” says Weltman. “Our interest was, and remains, that they're not adequate.”