California Lawmakers Send AI Regulation Bills to Newsom

"California lawmakers started the year signaling they were ready to get tough on data centers, aiming to protect the environment and electricity ratepayers. Nine months later, they have little to show for it. Of four data center bills in play, two never made it out of the Legislature, including one that would have required data centers to publicize their power use and another that would have provided incentives for them to use more clean energy."

"Two others are on Gov. Gavin Newsom's desk, but in substantially reduced form. One mandates disclosure of water use by data center operators, although now in a way that may elude public access. Another originally aimed to protect energy customers from shouldering infrastructure costs driven by data centers but now merely lets regulators figure out if that is happening. Data centers have the seemingly mundane job of storing and transmitting the contents of the internet. But the drab, largely windowless facilities are becoming a growing public policy concern. At least one is involved every time you watch a TikTok video or shop on Amazon."

"In recent years, demand for artificial intelligence, and especially new general purpose systems like ChatGPT, caused such server farms to multiply. That means more water to cool semiconductors used to train and deploy AI models and more power plants and transmission lines, leaving state regulators increasingly concerned about stress on reservoirs and potentially higher power bills for residential customers."

California lawmakers sought stronger oversight of data centers to protect the environment and electricity ratepayers but produced limited results after nine months. Four bills were introduced; two failed to pass, including measures to require public reporting of power use and to incentivize greater clean-energy adoption. Two remaining bills reached the governor in substantially reduced form: one requires water-use disclosure in a manner that may limit public access, and the other only tasks regulators with determining whether customers bear infrastructure costs from data center growth. Rapid expansion of AI-related server demand increases water and power needs, raising regulator concerns about reservoirs and higher household energy bills.

Read at San Jose Inside