New York legislature passes one-year data center ban

If Gov. Kathy Hochul signs a bill passed by the state legislature last week, New York could become the first state to temporarily ban new data centers statewide, reports Lauren Feiner in The Verge.

The legislature passed the one-year moratorium to give policymakers time to understand the impacts of data centers on communities and the environment and to develop regulations. "It directs the state’s environmental agency to create an impact report assessing the amount of electricity, water, and land that data centers use, and the pollution they create. It also requires companies planning to build large data centers — defined as having a peak demand of at least 20 megawatts — to hold and fund a public hearing at least three months before it’s able to gain approval for the project."

Industry groups oppose the bill, with Stacey Sikes, acting president and CEO of the Long Island Association, saying that the ban would "overall be damaging to the state’s economy, because having a blanket moratorium instead of looking at it at a case by case basis would not allow the state to move forward on a data center project that would actually be helpful to our economy."