Seattle Enacts Year-Long Ban On New AI Datacenters
- Reference: 0183725266
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/26/06/10/0541213/seattle-enacts-year-long-ban-on-new-ai-datacenters
- Source link:
> Lawmakers have framed the pause as an opportunity to draft regulations specifically targeting the electricity-hungry datacenters being built nationwide to serve the AI sector, and to protect local residents from environmental risks and rising electricity bills. According to Seattle mayor Katie Wilson, the moratorium will also let city officials determine whether datacenters are a "good use of urban land," and potentially impose new stipulations on their approval, such as requiring developers to invest in local transit and housing initiatives in exchange for construction permits. "There are times when public pressure forces elected officials to do something they don't want to do, but in other cases, public pressure just supports and helps to spur on elected officials to do things that they already want to do," said Wilson. "I think this was one of those latter cases." [...]
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> An [2]amendment to the moratorium that passed unanimously last week allows existing datacenters in Seattle to apply for expansions requiring up to 20 megawatts of additional power during the year-long pause. Activists are concerned that the provision may lead to a spike in datacenters' demand for power while the moratorium is in place, and may undermine the premise of the pause. Lawmakers justified the amendment as a way to differentiate between the datacenters that already exist in Seattle and serve a civic purpose, like those powering health facilities and emergency-call systems, from large-scale centers designed to serve the AI sector.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/09/seattle-ai-datacenters-ban
[2] https://seattle.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=15553282&GUID=6A37FDF7-6EB7-4F59-860C-27552145BCA3
Seattle, no business wants you. (Score:4, Interesting)
If you're not from around Seattle, you might have noticed it has become a massive anti business city. So, don't worry, no one was trying to build those pesky data centers in Seattle. Past all the bad policies, you would build one near a ready available source of power and water. You would look to eastern Washington for that near a dam or such, if you wanted it in Washington. But get over yourselves Seattle, no business wants you, including DCs.
Re: (Score:3)
Being "pro-business" at all costs means being anti-resident, anti-environment, anti-worker, and anti-consumer.
Therefore, being pro-resident, pro-environment, pro-worker or pro-consumer might brand you as being anti-business.
There's a balance to be had among all of these things. Let's find that balance.
Re: (Score:2)
WTF are you talking about? Seattle is doing so much business that our taxes fund the rest of the state, including eastern Washington. You can talk when you start paying for your own infrastructure. Until then, politely STFU about Seattle business.
That's so Seattle (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a left leaning Seattlite, but I'm not a fan of Seattle's empty virtue signaling. It's so tedious. Go solve a real problem.
Why not Arctic? (Score:2)
The AI ones - as opposed to the conventional data centers - why not build them on the Arctic coasts, designing them appropriately to receive the maximum wind circulation and get constantly cooled, even while they're running 24/7/365?
- There won't be too many people who they will be competing w/ in terms of energy consumption
- Due to the ambient cooling, the amount spent on cooling resources could potentially be minimized
Re: (Score:2)
> why not build them on the Arctic coasts
In Shivering Moose, Alberta.
Re: (Score:2)
What the fuck, is this the site for Nerds..... AI is not bandwidth intensive, its agents can be, it is really memory scan, compute intensive, quite honestly solving large linear equations for the best fitting result. Anyplace with a fiber bundle has multiple TB/sec of bandwidth and laying fiber is a ton cheaper than laying a foundation in permafrost.
Re: Why not Arctic? (Score:1)
Think of the displaced caribou and polar bears!
Put them in the city (Score:3, Interesting)
"let city officials determine whether datacenters are a "good use of urban land,"
A city is certainly a better place to put a data center than paving over farmland or cutting down forests. There is an old smelter site near Tacoma that should be just fine.
The data centers already in Eastern Washington have already run out the previous surplus and further east Avista is out too.
[1]https://www.spokesman.com/stor... [spokesman.com]
[2]https://www.grantpud.org/blog/... [grantpud.org]
[1] https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2026/jun/09/avista-confirms-negotiations-with-company-seeking-/
[2] https://www.grantpud.org/blog/commission-recap-3-25-2025
Re: (Score:3)
Plus, Seattle has a 33% office vacancy rate, and the current mayor seems determined to run the rest off.
Looks like they could use the business, but I guess not.
Datacenter Myths are Going Wild (Score:4, Informative)
There are so many misconceptions about datacenters right now and the tech illiterate and economically illiterate are falling for them hand over first. For one thing, Datacenters are not only used for AI, but for the internet, cellphones, and every single technology you access on the internet. This is going to harm any tech business and related businesses in the area even with their small amendment for a tiny 20 mw expansion allowance for existing businesses only. For a city that has the home office of Amazon, you would like they would know better, but it seems driving out tech companies is their specialty as Amazon is no longer expanding in Seattle and actually moving out of offices. Economically this makes an assumption that electricity is a limited resource which it is not - if there is more demand for electricity then more electricity can be produced but instead they want to shut down demand for electricity, reducing electricity company profits, so they have no money to produce additional electricity. They are basically walking themselves into their own long term demise because they are afraid of short term increases in prices.
Re: (Score:2)
You got it in one.
Private enterprise wants to come in and upgrade your infrastructure without you having to float bonds, and somehow this is a bad thing.
This reminds me of when the company that built the monorai for Disney offered to put in monorails for the County of Los Angeles at their cost - the funds to be later recouped in fares (five cents per head at the time.)
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"In 1963, Alweg submitted a proposal to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors for a privately funded m
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alweg
Makes sense, in a way (Score:3)
But for reasons unstated. The tribes are coming after Seattle's cheap hydro resources. By demanding water for fish runs that never existed. One result of this is that any added load will require power from sources that are very expensive by comparison. Meaning that all of their electricity customers are due to see large rate increases. This is not politically viable in the push for more EVs. And the move to shut down natural gas service (already much cheaper than electricity).
Re: Makes sense, in a way (Score:1)
So you're saying Seattle is kicking out large businesses and high-earners in an attempt to free up precious electric resources to power EVs?
Brilliant!
"NEW" So how many/? (Score:1)
How many are already on the books to be built? Even if a shovel hasn't hit the dirt doesn't mean they haven't been going through the process to get one built, and so wouldn't be called new
Rates are going up near Data Center Alley (Score:2)
I live near Data Center Alley, but in an adjacent county with the same electrical provider. Rates are going up. My annual energy usage has gone down 15% but my costs have gone up 30%.
How is this fair in any possible way to residential consumers?!
Was anyone looking to build there anyway? (Score:5, Insightful)
Was anyone looking to build a data center in Seattle in the first place? Unless they were going to build something small, there's not enough space to build a new one and repurposing existing buildings for a data center might not be possible even if the rent weren't prohibitively expensive compared to building outside of the metro area. Even if a company like Microsoft wanted to build close to their campus, they'd be building a data center in Redmond instead of Seattle proper. There's still have a much easier time building outside of town because finding a few hundred acres that aren't already developed in a metro area is difficult as well as hideously expensive.
Re: (Score:2)
Probably not but there are two existing datacenters downtown along with Seattle Internet Exchange. Not a lot of room to expand though I imagine in the building.
Re:Was anyone looking to build there anyway? (Score:5, Informative)
> Was anyone looking to build a data center in Seattle in the first place?
Yes.
[1]According to the Seattle Times [seattletimes.com], in April "four companies approached Seattle City Light about building five large data centers with a combined maximum demand of 369 megawatts — roughly one-third of what the city uses on an average day".
[1] https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/climate-lab/seattle-passes-moratorium-on-new-data-centers-amid-national-backlash/
Re: Was anyone looking to build there anyway? (Score:1)
Will the City Council and the Mayor change their tune when Starbucks and other large corporations move out of Seattle?
Remember how the mayor was indifferent about millionaires and billionaires leaving Seattle? She was, "like, bye?"
Starbucks is moving 2,000 jobs out of Seattle, that's going to hurt the city, if the mayor realizes it or not...
Re: (Score:2)
Isn't the commercial vacancy rate somewhere north of 30%? It appears that Katie the Unready is determined to increase it.
Re: (Score:2)
Given how few jobs data centers contribute, and how much they hurt the residents electric bills, I'm going to guess... no, they won't. This is why opposition to data centers is bipartisan, even rural areas are pissed because they are being colonized by them, and they get literally nothing from it. No new jobs, just a swarm of contractors brought in from out of state for a quick build out and then they leave, the number of jobs data centers contribute even on a medium scale (5 years) is close to zero.