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New York state regulators won’t issue environmental permits for large-scale data centers for the next year, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Tuesday.
Hochul will sign an executive order implementing a “moratorium” on new air permits for so-called “hyperscale” data centers trying to tap into the Empire State’s electrical grid for up to a year.
“As data center 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,” she wrote in a statement.
“New York will lead the way in creating the strongest standards in the nation for data center development, ensuring that when companies succeed because of New York, New Yorkers succeed too,” she continued.
Rapid new demand for the massive computer-packed complexes has been spurred by artificial intelligence and other high-intensity services in recent years, but the facilities require large amounts of electricity.
Roughly half of New York voters polled by Siena University last month said they thought a one-year moratorium on large data centers was good for the state, while 21% said they thought it was a bad idea and 17% indicated they were somewhere in the middle.
The moratorium only applies to new applications for “up to a year” while the state undergoes a study and comes up with more new regulations on data centers.
“Once the State finalizes these standards, the moratorium will be lifted, allowing new data center projects to proceed as long as they follow state, zoning code and other local approvals,” Hochul noted.
The move falls short of a far more restrictive proposal passed by the state legislature earlier this year that would’ve included requirements that data center operations set a union-friendly prevailing wage standard and derive large amounts of their power from renewable sources.
Business groups fought the legislation.
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