On Tuesday, November 17, the San Jose City Council will consider whether to temporarily stop approving new data centers until December 8. Please use the form below to email the City Council and ask them to instead adopt a longer pause – a full moratorium – that will give the city time to strengthen its proposed rules for data centers, conduct robust community engagement, and study the combined, long-term effects of data center development.
What’s Happening
There has been a massive increase in data center proposals in San Jose in recent years. According to the city website, the city is currently reviewing eleven new data center projects, with five more already approved but not yet built, and the city expects more applications to be submitted soon. All of this adds up to likely more than five million square feet of new data center development in San Jose.
In response to community concerns, San Jose city staff proposed a set of draft standards to regulate new data centers. However, these standards fall short in multiple areas, including air pollution, toxic contamination, and noise. Green Foothills, together with other community organizations, has asked that the city adopt a moratorium on new data center development in order to revise and strengthen the proposed standards, conduct a robust community engagement process, and study the long-term cumulative impacts of future data center development.
Now, the Mayor and several City Councilmembers have proposed pausing new data center approvals until December 8, when the Council will vote on data center standards. While this proposal is appreciated, it does not change the fundamental problem, which is that the standards as proposed are too weak. If the Council adopts these standards in their current form, they will fail to protect people and the environment from the serious impacts that would result from the massive amount of new data center growth expected in San Jose.
Why It Matters
Small data centers have operated in Silicon Valley for decades, but the hyperscale data centers needed to power generative artificial intelligence (AI) that are being built today are an entirely different story. The chips that power AI use massive amounts of energy. As just one example, a proposed Google data center in Alviso would use 250 megawatts of power, which according to the California Public Utilities Commission is about half of what the entire County of San Mateo uses.
The unprecedented amount of energy going to data centers is causing concern across the globe about the climate change impacts. Tech companies that once pledged to achieve net-zero emissions by 2030 are now seeing their carbon emissions skyrocket rather than decline. In 2025, Amazon’s carbon emissions rose 16%, Google’s carbon emissions rose 18%, and Microsoft’s rose 25% due to the use of natural gas to power their data centers.
Because they use so much energy, these AI chips run extremely hot and must be cooled. This requires either more energy for air-cooling, or massive amounts of water. Air-cooling systems frequently use PFAS (known as “forever chemicals” because they last forever in the environment) or other toxic substances, which current technology can’t feasibly remove from wastewater. Data centers also require a constant power supply, which means they need backup generators which usually run on diesel fuel, a source of multiple air pollutants. Finally, data centers generate significant noise. Local residents have reported a “constant hum“ that disturbs them at night and gets louder when temperatures rise.
San Jose’s proposed standards fail to solve these problems. In particular, the standards do not provide any added protections for toxic substances or noise, and the air pollution limits are virtually unenforceable. We have provided the city with a detailed list of recommendations for strengthening the standards, and we are urging the City Council to adopt a moratorium to provide the necessary time to incorporate our recommendations into the standards, as well as to conduct community outreach and cumulative health and environmental studies.
What You Can Do
Please use the form below email the City Council and ask them, instead of a short three-week pause, to adopt a full moratorium that will allow time to strengthen the proposed data center standards, conduct robust community engagement, and study the long-term impacts of data center development.
