Maine Set to Become First State to Ban AI Data Centers

The goal of the bill is to give the state a chance to assess the impact of the data center buildout on the environment and utility prices in the state, according to the Wall Street Journal. Maine has some of the highest residential electricity prices in the country and lawmakers there are concerned that the expansion of the energy-hungry centers could further drive up prices.

Enactment of the Maine law could set off a chain reaction around the country. At least 10 other states, including New York, South Carolina and Oklahoma, have seen bills introduced to temporarily ban or restrict new data-center construction. In Ohio, a group of activists are gathering signatures on a petition to get a ban on new data centers onto the November ballot.

“I think Maine is the canary in the coal mine,” Anirban Basu, chief economist for the Associated Builders and Contractors, whose members who work on data centers, told the Journal. “Maine will be the first of many states to have such moratoria.”

Several local municipalities and counties have already imposed limits on new data centers. And last month, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) unveiled legislative proposals to temporarily pause data-center construction nationwide.

Related: Bernie Sanders Unveils Bill to Ban Data Centers Until Congress Passes AI Regulation

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Not everyone in Maine supports the moratorium, according to the Journal. The state has become a magnet for hyperscalers, including Microsoft and Google, often targeting the state’s many abandoned mills that local officials are eager to get back onto the tax rolls as sites on which to build the facilities.

In addition to the economic impacts from the boom in data-center construction, the resource-gobbling centers have drawn opposition from environmental groups. A recent study by a group of academics based at Singapore’s Nanyang Technical University used data from ground temperature sensors around the world to estimate that the land surface temperature increases by 2°C on average after an AI data center begins operation, creating local heat islands.

“With global data volumes growing rapidly, data centers are expected to be one of the most power-hungry [facilities] in the next decade,” the researchers wrote. “As such, it is possible to expect that the [cumulative] impact of data centers and AI hyperscalers’ activities on climate might not be negligible, indeed being further exacerbated by the use of AI in the next decades.”

The increasing political and popular resistance to data centers has left some developers gun-shy, per the Journal.

Proposed local measures restricting data centers are “a red flag,” Tracey Hyatt Bosman, a site selection consultant at BLS & Co., told the paper.  “They do limit where we are looking.”

Projects already planned or underway increasingly are caught in the crossfire. Tony McDonald, who is developing a data center in the western Maine town of Jay, said he is scheduled to begin construction in July. Yet, “all of a sudden we’ve been caught in this dragnet,” he said.

Politicians are also left trying to navigate tricky cross-winds. Gov. Mills, who is running for the U.S. Senate, said she supports the moratorium measure if it includes an exception for the project in Jay. “The project is expected to bring much-needed jobs, economic activity and tax revenue to the region,” her office said.

Mills currently trails political neophyte Graham Platner in the Democratic primary for the Senate seat.