New York became the first US state to enact a moratorium on new datacenters on Tuesday.
Governor Kathy Hochul issued an executive order mandating a one-year statewide pause on the large facilities used to power artificial intelligence products, which she signed at a mid-morning press conference.
“As datacenter development threatens to hike up utility bills, deplete our natural resources, and create uncertainty for New Yorkers, it’s my responsibility to take action and lead,” Hochul, a Democrat, said in a statement.
The order will pause the state permitting process for proposed “hyperscale” datacenters, defined as having electrical capacity of more than 50 megawatts, and direct state regulators to create standards focused on environmental impacts, energy demand, water usage and other factors, the governor’s office said.
These data centers have virtually no purpose except for keeping a bubble from popping. A year out may as well be a permanent ban as far as the whole operation is concerned.
Finding out how to permit them isn’t hard: Stop exempting them from laws and regulation. All the laws and regs are there to address all those ‘impacts’ and ‘factors’ they want to form committees about.