Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - Last week, the Buffalo Common Council were presented a resolution from North District Councilman Joe Golombek that was seek a two-year moratorium on any potential new data center or crypto mining facility across the city limits.
During Tuesday's Community Development Committee meeting, the city lawmakers hosted a public hearing regarding the moratorium, where nearly a dozen people made up of community members and advocates spoke in support of the moratorium. After hearing from the public, many of the Council members also spoke in support of the measure.
According to Golombek, who spoke with WGRZ's Nate Benson after the meeting, he expects the moratorium to pass at the next general Common Council meeting this coming Tuesday. Golombek also told Benson once the measure is passed, a commission will be formed that will address appropriate zoning and regulations for any city data centers.
Buffalo Mayor Sean Ryan says his office had been working on a one-year moratorium as an Executive Order, but pulled it back when New York Gov. Kathy Hochul issued an Executive Order for a one-year moratorium across the state.
"Now the Council has a two-year moratorium that differs significantly from the state's, so we're going to take a look at that," said Ryan on Thursday. "We all know what the enemy is. The enemy is big data centers coming in and buying land. But we have to make sure that we don't inadvertently sweep up Roswell Park's computers, M&T Bank's computers, Kaleida's computers, the University at Buffalo. So we're going to be checking with all these institutions that have rather large computer storage facilities to make sure this somehow doesn't affect them."
As more-and-more municipalities continue to explore moratoriums on data centers and residents voice their concerns, utility companies like National Grid can understand the concerns.
"We don't have any data centers here that are driving demand to levels where we would need to be super concerned about. The data center phenomenon really hasn't hit yet, but that's not to say we don't get inquiries," said Ken Kujawa, regional director at National Grid. "Data centers are looking all the time, they're looking to find where they can locate, where they can identify locations where the capacity exists to meet their loads."
Kujawa says the data centers do pose some challenges for utility companies, because they are larger electric loads than what they normally see on their system.
"With data centers, the issue is they're large consumers of electricity, so each case has to be looked at individually, in terms of the amount of electricity they're going to consume and also where they're going to locate, to make sure that the infrastructure is at that location to be able to serve them," Kujawa said with WBEN. "And if it's not and we have to build additional facilities to serve them, then that data center or that large load customer has the responsibility to pay for that."
Kujawa knows well that ratepayers don't want to see their energy bills go up, and it's something all utility companies need to be cognizant of. He believes the state's guidelines that will be established during the one-year moratorium will help set the stage for much of what happens going forward.
"Gov. Hochul created the moratorium through her Executive Order, the state's going to take a step back and create the rules of engagement for data centers. And, obviously, there's going to be a lot of focus on electricity. So I think we just have to wait to see what comes out of that, and then once we find out where the governor is going to land, then I think we'll be in a better position to talk about it in more detail," Kujawa said.
He adds the guidelines the state establishes for data centers as a result of the moratorium will put utility companies in a better position to be able to figure out how to work with data centers across their franchise area.
"We think that there's an opportunity for the potential for large loads like data centers to actually be able to create a revenue stream for utility companies to be able to fund future infrastructure investments," Kujawa noted. "So if we all do this right, we think there's a way that data centers can actually be beneficial when it comes to how utilities work with them and, looking down the road, have them help us fund investments that are needed in our infrastructure, not just to serve them but also our larger customer base."
