California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a slate of bills on Monday that could finally give communities better data — and more say — on how data centers impact their electricity bills and water supply.
As data centers invade a growing number of communities across the US, they’ve triggered protests over how the infrastructure underpinning AI might stress power grids and local water systems. That’s fueled partly by concerns about how difficult it is to see just how much electricity or water they’re actually gobbling up.
California’s new disclosure rules won’t offer a full picture, but starting next year, data center operators will have to start sharing some of these details. “It’s extremely frustrating to try to understand basic information,” says Mark Specht, senior manager for the climate and energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).
”“It’s extremely frustrating” The seven bills Newsom signed go beyond requiring disclosures. Senate Bill 886, Assembly Bill 2383, and Senate Bill 1168 direct the California Public Utilities Commission to create separate power rates for data centers to recoup the costs of connecting such power-hungry facilities to the grid.
That’s supposed to prevent data centers from passing on the costs to other consumers of new infrastructure built to satisfy their energy demand. On top of that, AB 2383 also pushes data centers to use more renewable energy.
The rest of the legislation grapples with the enormous gaps the public has when it comes to how data centers impact surrounding communities and the environment. AB 1577 requires monthly reporting on data centers’ energy consumption.
AB 2619 and AB 2469 require water disclosures, and the latter also makes data center operators responsible for covering the costs of infrastructure upgrades needed to serve them. “As scientists, when we went to research state offers in California, I was kind of dismayed by the lack of information that there was to work with.
And so I’m happy [AB 1577] passed,” Specht says. Specht co-authored a fact sheet this year on how data centers could impact the power grid and utility rates in California.
A different scenario shows data centers could actually lower electricity costsOn the other hand, a different scenario shows data centers could actually lower electricity costs. Electricity rates include fixed costs for grid maintenance, so spreading those costs across more customers can bring bills down for everyone.
