Pasadena Lacks Zoning Rules and Grid Capacity for Data Centers, Committee Learns

Pasadena's municipal services committee learned that the city lacks the zoning rules, infrastructure, and policy framework to accommodate large data centers. A single hyperscale data center could consume over a third of Pasadena's electrical load, but the city has no zoning category for such facilities and no locations capable of serving a 25-megawatt load. The committee called for immediate action to address these gaps, including exploring data center-specific zoning, requiring operators to bring their own clean power, and flagging large load requests for council review. Neighboring cities' data centers could also impact Pasadena through shared utility supplies and cost shifts. The city plans further analysis to determine if certain data centers should be prohibited.