In San Jose, the largest city in California's Silicon Valley, residents and environmental groups are mounting an opposition campaign against plans to build artificial intelligence data centers. San Jose, with a population of about 1 million, is California's third-largest city. Last year it reached an agreement with utility PG&E to strengthen power supply for data centers and other facilities, and it estimates that each data center opened generates 3 million to 6 million dollars a year in tax revenue for services such as police, fire, libraries, roads and parks. Elina Yin, who leads the residents' group I Love San Jose, says companies should prove how they give back to the community, and is calling for stricter public review before construction is approved, greater transparency on energy and water use, and studies of health and environmental impacts. Mayor Matt Mahan told Reuters that the solution is not to stop construction but to carry it out responsibly, and that residents' questions are entirely reasonable. The California State Assembly and Senate recently passed several data center-related bills, including measures to ensure large electricity consumers share the costs of the transmission grid and requirements to increase transparency around energy and water consumption, and Governor Newsom must decide this month whether to sign or veto them.
PG&E CorpSan Jose's data-center buildout that PG&E agreed to supply power for faces resident opposition and pending California data-center bills on grid-cost sharing and transparency, creating regulatory uncertainty for PG&E's data-center load growth.
