(WAVE/WKYT) — A local climate activism group is hoping residents will show up to public data center hearings to oppose the draft regulations by the Greenberg administration.
The Louisville Climate Action Network (LCAN) warns that proposed regulations for potential data centers contain loopholes that fail to prevent energy use that would lead to higher utility bills for everyday taxpayers.
“You only need to go to Columbus, Ohio, to find the average residential customer paying $27 a month extra on their electricity bills to cover infrastructure required by Big Tech’s data centers,” Sarah Lynn Cunningham, Executive Director of Louisville Climate Action Network, said in an email to WAVE.
A series of public hearings is scheduled in-person and virtually for citizens to voice their opinions about the data centers. The series of meetings will begin at 5 p.m. on their respective dates.
According to LCAN, the city’s draft regulations are “convoluted, full of loopholes” and would allow permits for many data centers to go through without public notice or neighborhood input.
Advocates say public input was ignored
While thousands of citizens submitted public comments, LCAN believes recent tweaks to the draft rules show the city ignored a vast majority of local safety and economic concerns.
Trevor Pawl, head of the public-private economic development partnership One Louisville (formerly the Chamber of Commerce), told WFPL radio that the city remains committed to business growth.
“We are going to be pro-business, and if there is a great business plan for a data center that is additive to our technology economy and provides great community benefits, we’re going to be in support of that,” Pawl said.
LCAN argues that the energy and water used by data centers, which has driven up utility costs in other areas of the country, would have the same effect here. They describe the city’s push as “an attempt to stake a claim in a gold rush for fool’s gold.” They feel it is ill-advised amid analysts’ claims the AI bubble is bursting.
“The city says it wants data centers to build here,” Cunningham said. “Sure, more property taxes would be nice, but data centers are hyper-mobile. If Big Tech gets a better deal elsewhere, we all will get stuck paying for the new power plant LG&E is building for a data center.”
The demands for Greenberg’s Administration
At the upcoming hearings, LCAN is calling on decision-makers to implement the following protections:
- Adopt a temporary moratorium on all new data centers.
- Start the regulatory drafting process over with heavier community integration.
- Adopt the Kentucky Resources Council’s Model Ordinance for stricter environmental protections.
- Ban nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) between developers and elected or appointed officials to ensure transparency.
If residents cannot attend, LCAN encourages them to sign petitions and to reach out to their civic leaders.