Utah senator proposes bills on data center transparency

SALT LAKE CITY — Sen. John Curtis is joining with a Democrat from Delaware to introduce a pair of bills aiming to increase the transparency of large data centers and give communities more information about potential impacts of their development.

The Utah Republican noted the negative feelings many voters have toward data centers in announcing the bills on Thursday.

"Americans are rightly skeptical when a large company tells them not to worry about the impacts of a new data center in their community," Curtis said in a news release. "The answer to that distrust is transparency. Communities deserve independent, reliable information about what these projects mean for their power bills, water, infrastructure and local economy."

Together with Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester, D-Delaware, Curtis is sponsoring the Data Center Community Empowerment Act and the Data Center Transparency Act. The former would give communities access to technical expertise on data centers while the latter adds mandatory reporting on environmental and energy impacts.

"These bills give local leaders the facts and expertise they need to ask tough questions and make informed decisions — without Washington or industry making those decisions for them," Curtis said.

What the bills do

The first bill, the Data Center Community Empowerment Act, would create a program at the U.S. Department of Energy to provide expert advice to state, local and tribal governments on the impacts of data centers. The department's analysis could relate to various issues including electricity demand, water use, economic impacts and projected tax revenues from data center projects.

If the bill passes, the department would also create a toolkit with straightforward information to help local officials who lack technical expertise.

Local officials would still have final say over projects, and the bill would prevent the Department of Energy from offering specific recommendations about whether a certain project should be approved or not.

The bill would help "ensure communities have a say in how these projects affect their quality of life," Blunt Rochester said.

The Data Center Transparency Act would require regular reports from the Environmental Protection Agency and Energy Information Administration on the water use, energy consumption and greenhouse emissions of data centers. The bill would apply to large data centers.

The Environmental Protection Agency would be required to provide Congress and the public with a report every three months detailing the total amount of water consumed by data centers nationwide, how much water is reused, how data centers impact water availability, what pollutants are discharged into water by data centers and the total amount of greenhouse gases emitted.

Meanwhile, the Energy Information Administration would be required to report similar nationwide statistics on energy use, changes in energy use and impacts data centers have on household energy bills at least every six months.

"The development of data centers is rapidly increasing across the country and there are legitimate concerns about how these projects could raise utility bills, harm our environment or impact public health," Blunt Rochester said. "These bills are a necessary step toward creating a safer, more inclusive and more informed process."

The Data Center Community Empowerment Act was introduced and assigned to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, while the Data Center Transparency Act was assigned to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

What's being done on data centers?

Americans are increasingly turning against data centers in their communities. A large data center proposed in Box Elder County earlier this year has prompted strong backlash, and likely played a role in the ousting of several local officials and the president of the state Senate in this year's primary elections.

Utah lawmakers passed a law earlier this year similar to the Data Center Transparency Act. It requires the operators of large data centers to regularly provide the government with information about water use and efforts made to reduce water consumption.

State lawmakers could consider additional regulations after a state agency head said there are "major gaps" in how the state regulates the impacts new data centers will have on local temperatures and noise.

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