Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson on Friday said she supports a one-year moratorium on construction of new large data centers in the city. The announcement followed plans by City Council members Eddie Lin, Deborah Juarez and Council President Joy Hollingsworth to introduce legislation that would ban such facilities for a year. The measure already has the backing of five council members and could later be extended by another six months.
The move was prompted by an outpouring of public concern: Wilson said Seattle residents sent more than 54,000 messages expressing “serious alarm.” Lin, the bill’s author, emphasized that the city should not subsidize the multibillion-dollar profits of tech giants at the expense of local residents. The mayor’s office pledged to develop policies to protect citizens from rising electricity rates.
The issue arose after four companies last month contacted the city-owned utility Seattle City Light requesting to build five data centers. Their combined power use could have reached 369 megawatts — about one-third of the city’s average daily consumption. The utility said such a load would seriously strain supply for existing customers. Seattle City Light, which owns and operates Seattle’s power grid, plays a key role: without its approval for interconnection and power delivery, such projects can’t move forward, and the utility must balance the growing demands of tech giants with the interests of ordinary residents.
After a wave of criticism, one developer withdrew its application, and Microsoft, based in nearby Redmond, and Amazon, headquartered in Seattle, denied involvement in the projects. These corporations are the region’s largest employers, creating thousands of jobs and generating billions in tax revenue, but their denials of direct involvement have left locals skeptical of the giants’ good faith. People fear that if companies don’t acknowledge their impact on grid demand, they could avoid paying their share for infrastructure use, and residents’ electricity bills could rise to subsidize corporate energy costs. On Thursday, Sabey of Tukwila also dropped out of the race; it had planned a 68-megawatt facility on its campus. A company representative cited internal construction constraints that rendered the project “unviable.”
That leaves only two pending applications in the city — from Equinix and Prologis — for three data centers totaling 249 megawatts. To prevent similar crises, City Light is developing new terms: large customers would be required to supply their own electricity. At the same time, the mayor’s office and the council are pushing for state-level regulation to avoid losses for residents and small businesses.
Based on: Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson backs data center moratorium