Even though they’re headquartered elsewhere in the Seattle area rather than downtown, Microsoft and Amazon are two giant tech companies that are pouring untold billions of dollars per second into AI computation. Nonetheless, on Tuesday Seattle imposed a one-year ban on large data centers.
In April, the Seattle Times reported that the city’s electric utility, Seattle City Light, was facing a data center problem: four mysterious companies were beginning work on five separate massive data center projects that would draw power from the Seattle grid – consuming 369 megawatts in a city with only one gigawatt of capacity. Andy Strong, a representative of Seattle City Light, told the Times, “We only have so many engineers. We only have so many project managers,” adding, “It’s going to have an impact.”
According to a story published last week in the Guardian, the news alarmed Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson, who told the newspaper, “This is the first I’ve heard about this as mayor.” He and the city council reportedly received 10,000 pro-moratorium emails from residents, and were “happy to move toward a moratorium, especially knowing that there was really strong public support for the action.”
The Guardian also claims that Seattle is the largest city ever to pass such a measure. According to a site called the US Data Center Moratorium Tracker (which, it should be noted, is a project of the hedge fund Interconnected Capital) there are 111 local data center moratoria, and 77 are currently active.
The Seattle moratorium passed unanimously, according to a press release on the Seattle City Council website. “I am grateful to the City Council for their work on this data center moratorium, and I look forward to signing it into law,” Wilson said in the press release.
Council member Eddie Lynn says in the release:
“Seattleans should not have to subsidize mega corporations’ record profits from the AI boom. At the same time, the city hosts smaller co-location facilities that provide data processing for 911 call centers, municipal activities, hospitals, universities, and cancer research. We can support these essential services by developing appropriate safeguards around mega AI data centers at the local and regional level.”
As the Times noted, the bill lasts for one year, and prevents the growth of data centers beyond a limit of about 20 megawatts. It also comes with the option to deal with an additional six months moratorium. A separate, related city bill passed Tuesday calls for analyzing data centers’ electricity, water and land use, as well as their impacts on residents’ health and employment.
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