(The Center Square) – As cities such as Seattle look to impose a moratorium on data centers, the State Attorney General’s Office’s Artificial Intelligence Task Force is contemplating recommendations to further regulate the centers throughout the state amid concerns about impacts on local utility rates.
Some legal experts say such proposals reflect concerns that are reflected in other parts of the country, while others argue that AI will allow for greater management of those resources.
DarrowEverett LLP Managing Partner Jon Restivo told The Center Square last month that while data centers have been around for a while, there’s been a “huge increase in demand,” driven heavily by the rising use of AI. His law firm represents clients with data centers.
The AGO AI Task Force ‘s draft recommendation also examine other aspects of AI drawing concern, including potentially replacing jobs. One recommendation, if adopted, would protect public sector jobs from the use of AI.
While the draft report acknowledges that “data centers can provide significant economic benefits for Washington residents,” it also notes that “the rapid expansion of data centers is creating significant pressure on electric utilities to raise rates for Washington residents. As demand for electricity to power data centers increases demand on the electrical grid, utilities must invest in new infrastructure to meet demand. The costs of increased infrastructure are generally passed on to residents through higher utility rates.”
Among the proposed recommendations related to data centers is that the Legislature “prevent residents of Washington from bearing the cost of adding significant new energy loads to the state’s electrical grid” and “require that companies building data centers bear the direct interconnection costs of connecting data centers to public utilities and cover any costs of generation, transmission or distribution systems required to serve new large loads and avoid shifting costs or risks to other customer classes.”
Restivo said that the response in other parts of the country at both the state and local level have varied greatly due to the amount of resources that data centers consume.
“A state that doesn’t have water scarcity might not be focused on water as opposed to a state like the southwest where water is a much greater concern, it might be more focused on water,” he said. “Air quality is another big concern. A lot of it can depend on the power source. It seems like the community engagement is getting ahead of the construction/permitting. It’s on a lot of people’s radar.”
However, he said that the key for the data center industry to succeed is “finding a balance where it’s still economically viable but addresses the concerns,” adding that certain locations move too slowly to accommodate this type of project.
“If it’s 18-24 months, that location is not going to be a great location,” he said.
Despite the concerns about increased energy use, some industry advocates say AI can also enable better oversight and more efficient use of energy resources.
The “rapid data center growth is forcing organizations to think beyond simple capacity planning and toward total operational readiness,” wrote Jan-Willem Steur, manager of Business Development at Naviam and an IBM Champion focused IBM Maximo Application Suite, in an email to The Center Square. “Power demand is no longer a background consideration, it is now a strategic constraint. Utilities, infrastructure owners, and enterprise operators need real-time visibility into critical assets, grid dependencies, maintenance risk, and failure scenarios. That is exactly where Naviam and IBM Maximo Application Suite create value: they help organizations move from reactive decision-making to proactive asset and operational intelligence, so growth can happen with confidence instead of guesswork.
“Infrastructure modernization is no longer optional if organizations want to keep pace with data center demand,” his email said. “Many are still relying on fragmented systems, manual processes, and asset data that is incomplete or disconnected from day-to-day operations. That makes it harder to predict failures, prioritize investments, and respond quickly when conditions change.”
The task force will vote on its recommendations in July.
