00 First Filter

The legislation, signed into law on Tuesday, is a one-year pause on permitting and construction of new “hyperscale” (larger than 50 megawatts) data centers, facilities that power large AI systems, while the state develops stricter rules on energy use, environmental impacts, local control, and rules on mitigating AI’s effect on jobs.

“These hyperscale AI data centers consume enormous amounts of power, truly threatening to outpace our grid’s capacity, and they drive up costs for local ratepayers,” Gov. Kathy Hochul said on Tuesday.

“I refuse to let those costs be passed on to New Yorkers who already pay too much for their utility bills.”

The legislation follows widespread fearmongering about AI data centers, including concerns about their water and energy usage that have been massively overblown.

For example, few people know that all current AI data centers combined use less than 0.5 percent of the United States’ freshwater for cooling. Typically, even a large data center uses less fresh water than a single square mile of farmland.

Another common concern, what I’d call a myth, is the power usage of AI data centers. While they are massive consumers of electricity, that’s simply a reason to build more power generation. And so far, data centers have failed to drive residential price increases on any scale larger than your average Democrat-driven climate policy, according to groups like the Manhattan Institute. Other critics have likened the concern about power usage to halting the construction of computers because they use electricity.