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New York becomes the first state to impose a data center moratorium

reuters.com

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Re: New York becomes the first state to impose a data center moratorium

#51

Post by jeffbee »

cmiles8 wrote: post #26
jeffbee wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

99% of data center space has nothing to do with AI and is just the consequence of the long trend of flight from corporate data closets to central facilities and clouds.

Yeah no. Almost everything people are pushing back against is branded as AI data center expansion. Moving to the cloud doesn’t need net new data centers being build… that’s just workloads moving from one data center to another.

Obviously you're welcome to whatever beliefs comfort you, but most data centers that are anywhere near anyone are not related to AI, largely because AI applications are not very sensitive to latency and don't need to be near users. The specific one in Hayward I mentioned is advertised for corporate IT, as is another one in Pittsburg (California).

Anyway the projects should not be adjudicated based on what happens inside. They should be judged on whether they pollute and make noise.

Re: New York becomes the first state to impose a data center moratorium

#52

Post by piltdownman »

ecshafer wrote: post #40
piltdownman wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Governance of that oh-so-dependable Texan power grid are going to engage in some macabre arithmetic this Winter...

many of the data centers are being built with natural gas generators on site, and they are using excess gas from the oil drilling.

Texas is the only state in the lower 48 that has no major connections to neighboring power grids. That means growing energy demand in Texas must be met by new power generation in Texas.

Texas has not improved energy efficiency standards since the 2021 blackout, and have resisted all attempts at increasing the governance of the gas generation.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas' "Capacity, Demand and Reserves report" even details a scenario in which massive energy demand growth in the state surpasses available supply in 2026.

https://www.ercot.com/files/docs/2025/02/12/CapacityDemandan...

Now add data centre demand in a climate where passive-cooling isn't viable and inter-state redundancy is non-existent.

Re: New York becomes the first state to impose a data center moratorium

#53

Post by ReptileMan »

A good solution for this is just the AI companies to cut access to this types of areas. After all AI is just bubble that will pop any second. It obviously have no economic values as the tokenmaxxing fiasco showed. I know it is true because NYTimes wrote on the matter.

Re: New York becomes the first state to impose a data center moratorium

#54

Post by kyledrake »

A lot of people run production, non-AI servers out of New York data centers. This will be a serious problem for a lot of people, including smaller companies, when they can't expand capacity in New York anymore and prices for what's left start going through the roof. It's not always easy to move servers to other data centers, not everything is an eventually consistent database.

Re: New York becomes the first state to impose a data center moratorium

#55

Post by UncleOxidant »

Oregon has a 1-year moratorium on new data centers qualifying for the state's Enterprise Zone (EZ) property tax incentive programs (as of June 5, 2026. We shouldn't be giving tax incentives to these Data Centers. But it looks like this NY moratorium goes way beyond that to actually stopping construction.

Re: New York becomes the first state to impose a data center moratorium

#56

Post by giantg2 »

aynyc wrote: post #29
hexator wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Catskills have those environmental protection laws because they are the water source for NYC. It would be very stupid to relax those to build data centers.

NYC owns those lands for water. ADK has forever wild in NYS constitution. They are not gonna get relax for data center because they discharge water and noise and add significant infrastructure change. Solar farm on the other hand might go up tho.

Replacing natural lands with solar farms is one of the stupidest things I've seen. They're doing that on some state parks near me.

Re: New York becomes the first state to impose a data center moratorium

#57

Post by int32_64 »

I have a family member that wants to ban all data centers and I felt like Daniel Plainview in the milkshake scene showing them the AWS region selector interface, explaining that regional data center bans in deep leftist areas won't move the needle.

Nothing short of a totalitarian one world government can stop the development of AI technology, there's simply too much demand. It's just not happening.

These people should make peace with it sooner than later and propose more reasonable terms like mandating AI companies invest in renewable energy.

Re: New York becomes the first state to impose a data center moratorium

#58

Post by jeffbee »

inigyou wrote: post #36
jeffbee wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

99% of data center space has nothing to do with AI and is just the consequence of the long trend of flight from corporate data closets to central facilities and clouds.

No way. DCs and DC expansion existed before AI but they were inconsequential. What's new is the massive ones being built by the lowest bidder solely for AI. For a working template look at the xAI one that gave an entire town asthma, but luckily most of them overrun cost and get abandoned. You would reasonably ask how a datacenter, of all things - one of the cleanest industrial buildings - can give an entire town asth…

The Army should just shell that place, but Elon's crimes are not mainstream data center projects. I don't think we should allow someone to just set up a gas pipeline and open the valve, but I also apply this logic proportionally to major polluters like cars and airplanes and non-IT grid loads that rely on fossil fuel generators.

Re: New York becomes the first state to impose a data center moratorium

#59

Post by UncleOxidant »

afavour wrote: post #3

It’s a one year moratorium. I don’t see a problem with this. A lot of voters are concerned about the impacts data centers will have, those concerns are not entirely unwarranted. We don’t actually have to be moving at breakneck speeds, the AI companies just want you to think we do. A pause to investigate seems warranted.

To some extent you wonder if this "tapping the brakes" might be saving some companies from themselves. It's likely we're in the overinvestment phase of this technological cycle and that's usually followed by the bust phase where a lot of companies with a lot of debt go under. See The Panic of 1873 and the overbuilding of railroads (and huge debt accumulation) that led to that.

Re: New York becomes the first state to impose a data center moratorium

#60

Post by dylan604 »

khurs wrote: post #31

>The state currently has more than 130 data centers, according to Data Center Map, compared with more than 600 in Virginia and about 500 in Texas. Texas is physically larger and 'business frienedly' so suspect they will be getting a lot more. Taylor Sheridan can do a new series where a Ranch owned by a family for many generations is targeted by a Datacentre company.

Taylor Sheridan's movie studio is on land that was once a ranch
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