Imposes a moratorium on data center permit issuance; and relates to data center rate impacts

• Democratic72
• Republican3

◆ The sponsor's argument

Why Liz Krueger says this is needed

The rapid growth of data centers around the country, including in New York State, is driving up electricity rates, putting a strain on the electric grid, increasing fossil fuel consumption, and making it more difficult to achieve clean energy targets. A Bloomberg analysis of wholesale electricity prices found that 70% of locations with year-on-year price increases were within 50 miles of significant data center activity. Nationally, household electricity rates increased 13% in 2025, largely driven by the development of data centers. The projected tripling of data centers across the nation in the next five years would result in data centers consuming more electricity than 28 million households. Data center electricity usage in New York has been projected to increase by more than 9,000 MW, which is approximately double the electricity use of all New York households combined. Data centers disproportionately use fossil fuels rather than renewable energy, with 56% of the electricity used to power data centers coming from fossil fuels, with the result that data centers have an average carbon footprint that is 48% higher than the US grid as a whole. Even when data centers use renewable energy, they often capture new renewable generation development that would otherwise have allowed for the closure or reduced reliance on fossil fuel power plants, thereby resulting in continued use of fossil fuel-based energy generation beyond current expectations. A tripling of data centers nationwide would require the equivalent water usage of 18.5 million households just for cooling the servers. Data centers convert agricultural and other non-industrial land to industrial usage, removing farmland, woodland, and other resources while driving up land values and property taxes. The computing hardware used to run arti- ficial intelligence (AI), including microchips and processing, memory, and storage components has a lifespan of 2-5 years and is regularly replaced with updated versions. As a result, the current AI boom will be responsible for generating up to 5 million tons of e-waste annually by 2030. This bill would address these issues by pausing the creation of new data centers in New York for 3 years, during which time the Department of Environmental Conservation and the Public Service Commission would be required to issue reports and regulations to minimize the impact cf data centers on the environment and energy costs. Pausing new data centers will allow New York State to avoid the worst impacts of the current AI bubble and the intense development pressure around new data centers, including the massive costs of building out the associated energy infrastructure. It will also give the Legislature and Executive agencies time to select and implement appropriate policies to address the nega- tive impacts of data center development.

This is the sponsor's own case for the bill, quoted from their memorandum. It is not Agora's description of what the bill does.