The decision, reached earlier this month, made Monterey Park the first city in the United States to prohibit data centers outright. The vote followed months of neighborhood opposition to a proposed facility that drew protests, lawn signs and public pressure on City Hall.

In March, the Monterey Park City Council voted unanimously to send the ban to voters while also extending a temporary moratorium on data centers. Within weeks, the developer behind the proposed project withdrew its plans.

Mayor Elizabeth Yang said residents who campaigned against the project were pleased with the outcome after months of organizing.

“They spent a lot of time door knocking, putting up signs, fundraising, campaigning,” Yang said. “So it was a lot of community effort.”

The Monterey Park vote comes as communities across California and the country weigh the economic promise of data centers against concerns about power consumption, water use, noise and environmental impacts. A March Gallup poll found that 7 in 10 Americans surveyed opposed having data centers built in their area.

Industry representatives, however, warn that bans could discourage investment. Khara Boender, director of state policy for the Data Center Coalition, said Monterey Park’s decision sends a message that the area is “closed for business.”

Data centers are the physical backbone of cloud computing and artificial intelligence systems, housing servers that process and store enormous amounts of digital information. California already has at least 287 such facilities, according to the Data Center Coalition. The group says data centers supported more than 665,000 jobs in the state in 2024 and generated $14.1 billion in state and local taxes.

Major technology companies are also pouring unprecedented sums into the sector. Meta, Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet are expected to spend a combined $700 billion on data centers worldwide by the end of this year.

Peter Leroe-Muñoz, senior vice president and general counsel for the Bay Area Council, argued that communities risk cutting themselves off from the infrastructure needed for modern business, research and innovation.

“Data centers make modern lives possible,” he said, calling them a platform for “play, productivity and potential” in the current economy.

Still, Monterey Park is not alone in taking a cautious approach. Local governments around California are considering how to regulate the industry as demand for AI-related infrastructure grows.

In Imperial County, supervisors are weighing a temporary moratorium on data center projects after residents criticized the county for moving forward with a proposed facility. In San Jose, where at least 40 data centers already operate, the City Council recently directed the city manager to draft new guidelines for future projects. Some critics remain wary, especially after the city last year promoted a partnership with Pacific Gas & Electric intended to streamline data center development.

For Southern California communities watching the rapid expansion of AI infrastructure, Monterey Park’s vote may serve as a test case for how far local governments are willing to go in pushing back against one of the technology industry’s fastest-growing sectors.

Original source: CalMatters

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The maker of ChatGPT put out a request for proposals for land, electricity, engineers and architects and began visiting locations in Oregon, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin this week.

Trump touted Stargate, a newly formed joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle and Softbank, shortly after returning to the White House last month.

The partnership said it is investing $100 billion — and eventually up to $500 billion — to build large-scale data centers and the energy generation needed to further AI development. Trump called the project a “resounding declaration of confidence in America’s potential” under his new administration, though the first project in Abilene, Texas, has been under construction for months.

Elon Musk, a Trump adviser and fierce rival of OpenAI who’s in a legal fight with the company and its CEO Sam Altman, has publicly questioned the value of Stargate’s investments.

After Trump’s announcement, a number of states reached out to OpenAI about welcoming additional data centers, Chris Lehane, OpenAI’s vice president of global affairs, told reporters Thursday.

The company’s request for proposals calls for sites with “proximity to necessary infrastructure including power and water.”

AI uses vast amounts of energy, much of which comes from burning fossil fuels, which causes climate change. Data centers also typically draw in large amounts of water for cooling.

OpenAI’s proposal makes no mention of whether it intends to prioritize renewable energy sources such as wind or solar to power the data centers, but it says electricity providers should have a plan to manage carbon emissions and water usage.

“There’s some sites we’re looking at where we want to help be part of the process that brings new power to that site, either from new gas deployment or other means,” said Keith Heyde, who directs OpenAI’s infrastructure strategy.

The first Texas project is in a region Abilene’s mayor has described to The Associated Press as rich in multiple energy sources, including wind, solar and gas. Also describing it that way is the company that began building the AI data center campus there in June — the same two “big, beautiful buildings” that Altman showed off in a recent drone video posted on social media.

Crusoe CEO Chase Lochmiller said that wind power is central to the project his company is building, though it will also have a gas-fired generator for backup power.

“We try to build data centers in locations where we can access low-cost, clean and abundant energy resources,” Lochmiller said. “West Texas really fits that mold where it’s one of the most consistently windy and sunny places in the United States.”

Lochmiller said he expects the Trump administration, despite the president’s opposition to wind farms, to be pragmatic in supporting wind-powered data centers when it is “actually the cheapest way to access energy.”

The other states where OpenAI is actively looking include Arizona, California, Florida, Louisiana, Maryland, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Utah, Virginia, Washington and West Virginia. Heyde said the company only plans to build “somewhere between five to 10” campuses in total, depending on how large each one is.

OpenAI previously relied on business partner Microsoft for its computing needs but the two companies recently amended their partnership to enable OpenAI to pursue data center development on its own.

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