On Wednesday, August 19 at 6:00 p.m., the city of San Jose is holding a community listening session on new uniform standards for data centers. Please ask the city to put a pause on data center projects until these new standards are approved!
What’s Happening
San Jose is experiencing an influx of data center proposals. In early August, two new data center projects were announced, one of them directly adjacent to Coyote Creek. In spite of strong community opposition to these data centers, the city argues that the increased revenue to the city will be worth the impacts to the environment and to communities.
In response to community complaints, the San Jose City Council directed city staff earlier this year to establish a set of “uniform standards and best practices” for data center projects. These standards are intended to help mitigate environmental impacts related to energy consumption, water usage and water quality, air quality, noise, and other impacts. However, city staff has stated that the new data center standards would not be finalized until the end of 2026, which means that there will be a gap of at least several months during which new data center projects may become grandfathered in and would not be subject to these new standards. In addition, developers might rush to get their applications submitted as soon as possible in order to escape being subject to the new standards.
We’re asking the city to put a pause on accepting and processing data center applications until the uniform standards and best practices are approved.
Why It Matters
Data centers create significant environmental impacts. The massive energy consumption by the type of data center needed to power AI technology threatens to send fossil fuel consumption and resultant greenhouse gas emissions skyrocketing. The stability of our local water supply may be affected by the huge amounts of water required to cool data center systems, and the chemicals added to that water are then discharged into wastewater. The backup generators needed to ensure that data centers never experience a power outage can increase air pollution from diesel fuel exhaust.
San Jose plans to create standards that will address these impacts. It makes sense to pause new data centers until the standards are ready, to ensure that these standards will apply to as many potential data centers as possible.
What You Can Do
The city is holding a community listening session at City Hall on Wednesday, August 19 at 6:00 p.m. If you’re available, please attend and speak about your concerns regarding data centers.
Please also use the form below to ask the city to put a pause on accepting and processing new data center proposals until the new standards are approved!
