On Tuesday, the Democrat-controlled state legislature in Maine passed a ban on large data centers. It wasn’t exactly close. The state’s House passed it 79-62, and the Senate passed it 21-13—along party lines with a few exceptions, according to the Wall Street Journal. Governor Janet Mills’ signature is still needed before it becomes law, and the Journal says she has signaled interest in signing such a ban under certain circumstances.
This ban passed in spite of—or perhaps because of—relatively low data center activity in Maine. Business Insider maps likely data centers construction by tracking permit requests for certain generators, and Maine appears to only have two such projects. However, data center demand drives up home energy costs, and the website Electric Choice ranks Maine fourth highest in electricity prices.
Just posted this to another response but 20MW is small, even for normal DCs. AI DCs are pushing 100MW plus. This would instead cause builders to create multiple smaller DCs, which would lose economies of scale.
I’m all for restricting AI DC buildouts but this looks like it’ll even impact normal DCs, which is a bit of a NIMBY approach.