Microsoft
Microsoft's first data center in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin.
Data centers, such as this 900-acre project Microsoft is constructing in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, have been met with backlash.
Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway and 10 alders are moving to place a year-long moratorium on zoning certificates for data centers. If adopted, the moratorium would be a first-of-its-kind move for the state.
Rhodes-Conway tells Isthmus that the proposed moratorium, which she plans to introduce tonight at the city council, is needed because the city does not “have a defined use of ‘data center’ in our zoning code right now.”
Some smaller communities around the country have enacted moratoriums on data center construction, but, if adopted, Madison would be one of the nation’s largest cities to enact such a ban. The moratorium could be lifted sooner pending enactment of a zoning ordinance that would address data center properties.
Rhodes-Conway is not yet sure what changes will be made in the revised zoning code, though she says land use and sustainability impacts are chief concerns.
“It's not something that we've looked at yet, and we've barely started to do the research necessary to look at how other communities are addressing this,” says Rhodes-Conway. “Of course, I share the concerns that many folks in our community have about energy use and water use in particular, but also sustainability more broadly, which is why I feel like we need to just take a pause and figure out the issues and see how our regulations can address them.”
Large data centers, which house IT infrastructure used for data storage and processing, have popped up across the country in response to growing use of AI and cloud computing. Midwestern states like Wisconsin, Illinois and Ohio have proven a top target for data center construction, given their proximity to the Great Lakes, as well as less expensive land and electricity. Proposed facilities are controversial due to their high electricity and water consumption; many centers use water evaporation to cool server rooms. Bloomberg projected in April that data centers by 2035 would account for 8.6% of U.S. electricity demand, “more than double their 3.5% share today.”
Data centers are largely unregulated under Wisconsin state law; the only mention of them in state statutes, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, is for a sales and use tax exemption. Democratic legislators have proposed legislation imposing stronger green energy requirements on the facilities and mandating they share their electricity and water usage, but it is unlikely that the bills will advance in the Republican-controlled Legislature.
There are additional considerations with building a data center in an urban environment, Rhodes-Conway says. Though she doesn’t think it is necessarily “problematic to have a data center in the city,” that would depend on a project’s size and form. Many data center proposals throughout Wisconsin have called for “acres of one-story buildings,” she says, citing a 1,600-acre proposal in DeForest.
But that’s a difficult prospect in Madison, a city without much spare land to go around.
“[The centers] do pay property tax, but the demand for different kinds of land uses in Madison is high enough that it's hard to imagine that a data center would be the highest and best use of land,” says Rhodes-Conway. “If we were looking at something that was multi-story, closed-loop in terms of their cooling, could dump their heat to a next door use and is approaching this very sustainably, that might be a different situation.”
Adoption of a local zoning change to regulate data centers would be a novel move in the state. Jerry Deschane, executive director of the League of Wisconsin Municipalities, a group that lobbies on behalf of local governments in Wisconsin, tells Isthmus that his organization is “not aware of any such ordinances in Wisconsin at this time.”
Adds Deschane: “That's not to say there aren't any; we're just not aware that any municipality has considered one.”
Protesters with groups Party for Socialism and Liberation Madison, 350 Wisconsin, and 50501 Madison on Dec. 2 urged the city and others in Wisconsin to issue a moratorium on new data centers, though there are currently none proposed in Madison.
An Oct. 29 Marquette Law School Poll survey found that 55% state residents believe “the costs of large data centers are greater than the benefits they provide.”
