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.
Good. Now get Poland Spring the fuck out of the state.
So what defines a “large” DC? Also, as much as I think we should be banning AI in general, where do these people think the internet runs? This strikes me as a case of NIMBY, where they want the benefits of networked computer systems, but don’t want the impacts it provides.
Maine’s ban has frequently been described as a ban on “large” data centers, but the threshold is 20 megawatts, which is actually pretty low, and effectively blocks construction of what is commonly known as an AI data center.
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.
It’s literally in the first sentence after the title.
Thanks for pointing the size out. 20MW is not very big. Average DCs can be between 25-50MW, the AI ones are freaking monsters, but this would kill even normal size/use DCs, which again begs the question: where do residents of Maine think th internet runs? Not just AI.
In places where the electricity can’t be subsidized by the people already living there.
