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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

#111

Post by cucumber3732842 »

dgellow wrote: post #75
giantg2 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly. Much of the anti-datacenter population got that way from hearing about the irresponsible ones and don't want it happening in their area. If they never heard about it because it was in the middle of nowhere, then they wouldn't be involved. It's NIMBY - data center or houses, don't build it near me.

A datacenter has way more impact on it’s surroundings than housing, I don’t think it’s fair to say they are both coming from the same NIMBY sentiment. Anti-housing NIMBY are afraid to see their overvalued houses reduce in price, while anti-datacenter folks see how loud and damaging they can be and say no

>A datacenter has way more impact on it’s surroundings than housing,

On the flip side a datacenter never showed up to a town meeting to screech about how my way of life ought to be illegal, how the businesses I patronize ought to be punitively regulated, how I ought to pay more taxes so that the city can do things I don't want done, etc, etc.

And I say this as someone who already lives near a bunch of industrial sites.

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

#112

Post by weberer »

verdverm wrote: post #106
weberer wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely serious. Sea water cooling for data centers is already in use here in Helsinki. And water temperature in the Gulf of America doesn't seem to go above 30 C even in the summer. https://news.ftcpublications.com/core/coastal-cities-test-se... https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/regsatprod/gom/sst_map.php

Sea water would have to be piped to places like Dallas, whereas much of Finland's people/data centers are closer to the shoreline. A solution that works in certain places does not generally work everywhere.

There's no need to build them in Dallas. Just keep them near the shoreline. The only reason you have so many data centers in North Jersey is so high frequency traders can make their calls 0.02ms before their competitors on the NYSE. For an average user, the 1ms ping between Dallas and Corpus Christi is not a problem.

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

#113

Post by [deleted] »

whartung wrote: post #97

How are (can) datacenters be taxed? Mind, I don't know, but normally you put in a business, or factory, etc. the state can tax the economic output of the factory. The factory builds things, sells things, they tax the sales of those things. Local employees get salaries that can be taxed, etc. Of course, property taxes on the land and improvements. But how does that work with a datacenter? If I pay $5 for an EC2 instan…

[deleted]

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

#114

Post by coryrc »

nekusar wrote: post #72
buellerbueller wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The real question is "why do rates go up with a data center?" That answer is interesting. Its cause in most states, if a company formally requests a power hookup, the power company MUST comply. Thus entails in upgrading substations, transformers, supply lines, etc. And all those upgrades are borne by the citizens in that region. That's why you bill goes up, cause datacenter upgrades dump on the public their externali…

Every place I'm familiar with has demand charges on large-scale users that is supposed to pay for that equipment.

The real problem is boomers have stopped allowing things to be built efficiently, so supply is limited, had been limited for decades, and demand still grows, so prices spike disproportionally with demand increases.

Additionally we subsidize wind and solar heavily, but the fixed costs of large plants don't drop, so we end up spending for our power twice and for natural gas plants to replace coal, because that's the only solution we will do to keep power during the winter in Northern states.

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

#115

Post by enraged_camel »

coryrc wrote: post #96
piltdownman wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

Texas is the second-biggest state. Where are they going to make major connections to -- the Great Prairie? There's a whole New Mexico-worth of sparse population between Dallas/Austin/San Antonio before you get to New Mexico itself, which you would then need to cross halfway before you hit a major population center. Enron fiasco put a local power company here in WA in insurmountable debt because they couldn't ship pow…

>> El Paso has "major" connections to New Mexico.

El Paso is not part of the Texas grid (ERCOT):

https://www.epa.gov/green-power-markets/us-grid-regions

Neither are the panhandle nor the northeastern portion.

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

#116

Post by recursive »

pj_mukh wrote: post #17
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.

Blocking is easy, UN-blocking is hard (see: zoning and housing). There are no objective concerns to be met, and there will never be. I would bet a lot of money the moratorium is indefinitely extended every year. Always thought letting populism define a "slow-down" was silly, its a moratorium and a permanent veto everyone is looking for. It's fine, the data centers will be built elsewhere in more politically impoveris…

Un-blocking is still easier than un-building.

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

#117

Post by ianm218 »

I live in NYC and think the politics in the city and state have been a disaster for middle class people and see this as a continuation of that.

The electricity is expensive basically due to the state, so we have to block economically productive projects like data centers because we made our resources artificially scarce. I.e. Indian Point 2 GW Nuclear Site was shut down in 2021, replaced by Natural gas. And then we pay high prices for Natural Gas since we block building of gas pipelines.

NYC is also home to some of the worlds most productive financial and tech companies - it makes tons of sense to have datacenters located close by for latency reasons.

All these laws that block tons of economical construction are made by people who have already "made it" financially and then the class who benefits by having a robust construction, manufacturing, and machining type economy is screwed and we need to turn to destructive measures like rent control.

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

#118

Post by CrimsonRain »

whartung wrote: post #97

How are (can) datacenters be taxed? Mind, I don't know, but normally you put in a business, or factory, etc. the state can tax the economic output of the factory. The factory builds things, sells things, they tax the sales of those things. Local employees get salaries that can be taxed, etc. Of course, property taxes on the land and improvements. But how does that work with a datacenter? If I pay $5 for an EC2 instan…

Why do data centers need to be taxed separately?

Why does the local community need their take from that economic activity? What are they even providing? Are they providing land, electricity, and hardware for free to the data center?

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

#119

Post by schiem »

pj_mukh wrote: post #73
afavour wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are no objective concerns to be met Are you sure? Most of the objections I've seen center around environmental impact and effect on residential energy pricing in the surrounding area. Both of these seem to be to be objectively measurable. > the data centers will be built elsewhere in more politically impoverished states What does "politically impoverished" mean? I'd say more "politically permissive" states wo…

"environmental impact and effect on residential energy pricing" Sooo, how does that change in New York in a year? You've mostly re-inforced my point. And specifically the bill doesn't use any automatic re-enablement criteria, so data centers are basically dead in the state. Realistically, this is a canard, AI scares people and environmental impact is a lever to use to stop it. Ask yourself this: if this was a new For…

If "this" was a single new Ford plant, I would imagine that the local population around it would be having a similar conversation.

If Ford announced that they were opening 10 new plants in every state, then yes, I imagine HackerNews would be having this exact conversation about it.

The other factor is that these tech backed build outs seem to revel in flaunting regulations. More established businesses tend to at least check the regulatory boxes when building new things. Meanwhile, I opened Reuters this morning to this article:

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/pollution-musks-unper...

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

#120

Post by dlubarov »

nekusar wrote: post #72
buellerbueller wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The real question is "why do rates go up with a data center?" That answer is interesting. Its cause in most states, if a company formally requests a power hookup, the power company MUST comply. Thus entails in upgrading substations, transformers, supply lines, etc. And all those upgrades are borne by the citizens in that region. That's why you bill goes up, cause datacenter upgrades dump on the public their externali…

The rules shouldn't be specific to datacenters though; mechanics like Pennsylvania's "but-for" cost allocation make sense globally. If a new smelting plant requires upgrades to a substation, which wouldn't otherwise be necessary, the smelting plant should be charged accordingly.
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