Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers • Hacker News Board

Re: Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers

#191

Post by tt24 » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 9:16 PM UTC

petre wrote: post #133

inglor_cz wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In free societies, bans should be the last weapon of choice. By default, any activity should be allowed, many of the allowed activies should be regulated and/or taxed, but outright bans should be very well justified. Otherwise you will end up with a chaotic-authoritarian system banning whatever the current Zeitgeist feels icky about, which in the era of social networks means twenty different things each year.

It's a free state. Like the Swiss banned minarets in Geneva the Mainers should be allowed to vote to ban datacenters. AI bros can always opt to build their stuff elsewhere, like Texas or Abu Dhabi.

That’s not what a free society is.

That’s like saying “Mainers should be allowed to ban speech they don’t like, and private sex acts they find offensive”. Your view of what constitutes freedom is nonsensical.

Re: Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers

#192

Post by vkou » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 9:16 PM UTC

antisthenes wrote: post #171

cmiles74 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can call it childish if you want, but a lot of people are unhappy with the economy in general and rising costs in particular. Energy costs are a big part of those rising costs and, like it or not, the AI vendors and their data center projects are an easy target. I don't think it's necessarily a "backlash" to all the hype but the hype certainly made them a target

Mandating renewables for data centers would have left you with checks notes a shitload of renewables after the AI bubble bursts. Something that should (with good governance) lower energy costs.

If you or Google have a plan to make the federal government stop shutting down renewable projects, we can re-examine the data center question after you carry it out.

Re: Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers

#193

Post by unethical_ban » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 9:17 PM UTC

givemeethekeys wrote: post #106

Why not mandate that all data centers must be completely off the grid instead?

So they install noisy, loud fossil fuel generators that pollute the surrounding area.

Re: Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers

#194

Post by cucumber3732842 » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 9:18 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #183

AgentK20 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately it’s a race to the bottom in most of America: If you pass such regulations locally or in your state, the data centers will simply choose to not build in your area of authority (county/state). Unless we were to pass sweeping, nation-wide regulations (which this administration is aggressively against because they believe we are in an AI arms race with China), those regulations/bans just drive the data cen…

Maine obviously wouldn't have a problem with that, this law indicates they want them somewhere other than Maine. Environmental regulations that are as good as a ban seem far preferable to an outright ban, IMO. There's a large segment of the population that see outright bans as oppressive but support environmental regulations.

>Environmental regulations that are as good as a ban seem far preferable to an outright ban, IMO. There's a large segment of the population that see outright bans as oppressive but support environmental regulations.

So basically steal legitimacy from real environmentalists by applying their label to something that's not really motivated by environmentalism but can be construed that way?

"They don't actually want what I'm selling so I'm gonna dress it up as something else, they'll never know"

AreWeTheBaddies.jpg

The other problem you're gonna have is that this isn't an original thought. You're at least 20yr late to the party. So, so, so much absolute garbage has sailed under the flag of environmentalism that the public is starting to be more critical (see for example the kerfuffle over wind turbines off Rhode Island) and it's not unforeseeable that eventually the environmentalists are gonna have some sort of purge or reformation or reversion to more traditional environmentalism and serving corporate interests in order to reclaim some lost respect/legitimacy. Trying to sail "obviously not primarily about the environment" stuff under the flag of environmentalism is only gonna hasten that.

Re: Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers

#195

Post by freedomben » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 9:18 PM UTC

stego-tech wrote: post #190

lbarrow wrote: post #17

For people who support this kind of ban, I'd ask if you would support a similar ban on new factories for, say, car parts. Like data centers, factories use a lot of power -- which drives up electricity bills -- and their construction can have local environmental impacts. Data centers have a reputation for not providing too many local jobs, but modern factories are often highly automated and also don't provide too many…

This is one heck of a straw man argument: “if you wanna ban datacenters but not factories they’re basically the same thing”. The current datacenter boom isn’t general compute, but AI compute - a highly specialized form that’s not adaptive or recycled into other, demonstrably useful forms of compute should this end up being a highly speculative bubble or dead-end technology. The demonstrated environmental impacts are…

> This is one heck of a straw man argument: “if you wanna ban datacenters but not factories they’re basically the same thing”.

The irony in this comment is that you are the one arguing against a strawman, much more so than GP. They never said they were basically the same thing. There's certainly some level of comparison though as GP laid out in their comment.

Re: Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers

#196

Post by jmyeet » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 9:18 PM UTC

lbarrow wrote: post #17

For people who support this kind of ban, I'd ask if you would support a similar ban on new factories for, say, car parts. Like data centers, factories use a lot of power -- which drives up electricity bills -- and their construction can have local environmental impacts. Data centers have a reputation for not providing too many local jobs, but modern factories are often highly automated and also don't provide too many…

So it's hard to get numbers here so I went looking for electricity usage figures for an automobile plant. This obviously depends on the size but the estimates I could find for a theoretical plant that produces 1000 vehicles a day are:

- 300-400GWh/year of electricity usage. It's significantly more for EVs, as an aside;

- Such a plant employes 2000 to 5000+ people.

Data centers also vary in size but I've seen estimates of 20-100MW being a typical range. 20MW run continuously is 175GWh/year.

So it seems like one large AI data center employs probably fewer than 50 people and uses as much electricity as a plant producing upwards of half a million cars per year. Those cars have a lot of utility, obviously, and employ a lot of people.

Let's be fair: AI data centers currently produce almost nothing of value and contribute almost nothing to the local or state economy. They're being built speculatively on the basis of a potential future value add that has yet to materialize.

My view is that the "value" AI data centers will add is for employers, by allowing them to fire people and suppress wages. That's the true use case. So, in other words, AI data centers represent negative jobs.

Five years from now we'll see studies and media reports on the relationship between how many jobs you can eliminate per MW of electricity. The added bonus is all the residents will be paying higher amounts for their electricity for that "privilege".

Re: Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers

#197

Post by pesus » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 9:19 PM UTC

orenlindsey wrote: post #82

fr4nkr wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The major data centers being built for AI are much more energy-hungry than car manufacturing, and they're being built at a pace that the US energy grid simply cannot accommodate in the short term... or quite possibly even the long term, considering the US's extreme aversion to expanding nuclear power. Also, you can call it Luddism if you want, but a car factory is going to bring a lot more net benefit to the average…

I would argue that with the rise of coding and debugging agents, the AI data centers provide (or will in the near future) even more benefit than a car factory, in terms of digital infrastructure. These technologies are just a lot more invisible so we don't realize how important they are.

Can you explain how important they are? So far the benefits seem to be limited to faster code generation, which doesn't solve any actual problem people were facing, and is greatly outweighed by the negatives.

Re: Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers

#198

Post by DrewADesign » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 9:19 PM UTC

bitexploder wrote: post #155

DrewADesign wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The city making money off of it doesn’t make the impact smaller. You can’t tax away the air pollution coming from a gas turbine running in a populated area.

That was my point. It doesn't all have to be taxes. It can also be agreed upon mitigation maintenance. Better filtration on gas turbines, etc. Green spaces to mitigate sound impact. I don't know, I am just wondering if there is a model that can be designed that makes a data center "balance" within its local environment instead of getting the opposite, tax incentives. Right now I agree, they get to socialize the costs…

That all sounds nice in theory, but does the Lewiston municipal government have the resources and expertise to determine what countermeasures would be effective? Would it be left up to the company paying for the mitigations to decide what’s reasonable? I think we know how that would turn out. Even in heavily regulated states, industrial pollution still heavily impacts people in the vicinity. They usually accept it because so many of them work there. This place was estimated to employ 30 people. We don’t even know if problems like infrasound are reasonably avoidable or mitigated, and it’s not like they can make more water. Additionally, the way the industry has conducted itself over the past decade has been abhorrent. There’s no reason to believe they wouldn’t try to circumvent every last shred of mitigation knowing the city has comparatively minuscule resources to fight it.

If we put them anywhere — and I’m not convinced we really need all of the data centers we have, let alone all the ones we’re building — they should not be in the middle of densely populated areas like Lewiston.

Re: Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers

#199

Post by Bratmon » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 9:20 PM UTC

carefulfungi wrote: post #124

Bratmon wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mainers hate seeing wind and solar plants- they consider them to be a massive eyesore. The people of Maine won't consider "We'll build something you don't like but we'll offset it by building something else you don't like" as a compromise.

Of course Mainers aren't monolithic... https://www.mainepublic.org/climate/2026-04-07/maine-legisla... . https://www.maine.gov/energy/initiatives/renewable-energy/so...

Utility solar is VERY different from small-scale solar panels on houses.

And, yes, there are already utility solar and wind plants around. There are also chemical plants, prisons, and garbage dumps. That doesn't mean the people of Maine want to see more of those things.

Re: Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers

#200

Post by scoofy » Thu, Apr 09, 2026, 9:20 PM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #145

DrewADesign wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bingo. Data centers are a net negative wherever they are. Giant, employ far fewer people than a grocery store after they’re built, crank up electricity costs, use tons of water, air pollution if it’s self-powered, noise pollution (it’s really worth watching Benn Jordan’s video on infrasound,) ugly… the only local entities that win are the landowner and the municipality that collects taxes on them. Though I’ve seen so…

> Data centers are a net negative wherever they are. They really shouldn't be. There is a need for them and they aren't inherently damaging. There's no reason they can't be placed under some environmental regulations that cancel all their negatives, at least on some places. And they would still pay taxes. But no, datacenter owners are using their connections to remove any regulation instead.

Obviously the solution is to tax them instead of ban them so they end up dispersing income to the surrounding areas. The entire point though is that they won't get built where they are taxed, and eventually, through regulatory capture or governance capture, they'll get built without having to compensate for their exteralities.

The cynicism of residents is reasonable. They've have to be highly educated to actually understand the implications of what they're doing and how that revenue can be distributed. America's decline lends itself toward small-town corruption, where patronage is more important than communitarianism, due to large and accelerating net worth inequality, and an economy where outcomes are based on inheritance over labor.

This explains the logic behind an outright ban. You don't have to be vigilant about corruption and the principle-agent problem if the thing is just banned.