Bipartisan Senate duo puts forward bills aimed at increasing data center transparency
Sens. John Curtis and Lisa Blunt Rochester are introducing bipartisan bills to increase transparency about data centers’ economic and environmental effects. The legislation would create a federal advisory program for communities near proposed facilities and require reporting on large data centers’ environmental impacts, although its prospects in the Senate remain uncertain.
Utah Republican Sen. John Curtis and Delaware Democrat Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester are advancing separate bills intended to provide communities with more information about data center development. Curtis’s proposal would establish a federal program to advise residents near proposed facilities about their economic effects, while Blunt Rochester’s bill would create a federal accounting of the environmental consequences of large data centers.
The measures follow the failure of a House-backed bill addressing data center energy costs. That legislation would have required states to consider making facilities pay their own utility expenses, but it did not advance in the Senate. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer criticized the measure as insufficient, while Ohio Sen. Jon Husted defended it as a way to prevent data center costs from being shifted to local communities and states.