Minneapolis Narrowly Votes To Make Big Data Centers Buy Green Power

Minneapolis City Council members voted Thursday to keep new data centers inside existing downtown buildings, and larger ones would have to buy renewable power.

The 7-6 vote sends the ordinance to Democratic Mayor Jacob Frey, KSTP reported. A new data center can use up to 50,000 square feet for servers, or up to 150,000 square feet if the operator signs up to buy renewable power for all of the electricity it uses, the ordinance shows.

“Democrats spent the election promising affordability and are already finding new ways to make their communities poorer,” American Energy Leadership Institute President Chris Johnson said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “The AI boom represents an enormous opportunity to attract private investment, expand the tax base, and finance new power generation. Minneapolis Democrats seem determined to make sure somebody else gets all of that.”

Oakland’s City Council voted Tuesday to extend its own pause on new data centers until October 2027, the Oaklandside reported.

Some Minneapolis council members who back a ban saw the midterms as a vote on data centers, Fox 9 reported. Democrats who ran for governor in four states this fall said they wanted to pause new data centers.

The offices of Frey and Council Members Robin Wonsley and Aurin Chowdhury did not respond to requests for comment. Oakland Councilmember Carroll Fife and the Data Center Coalition, which represents the industry, also did not respond.

A new data center has to go into a building that was standing as of Jan. 1, 2027. That building needs at least one other main use, the committee version states. The servers cannot go on the first or second floor, and they have to be at least 100 feet from any home on a nearby property. Applications must also list expected water, electricity and generator use.

Council members pushing for a full ban, or for a council vote on every new data center, fell short on a 6-6 tie Monday, MPR News reported.

“We don’t need more computers in our downtown,” Council Member Soren Stevenson said, according to MPR News. “We need people down here, and so I want to fight for a vision where people are thriving in our city, not for a vision where stockholders are thriving in our city.”

Council Member Elizabeth Shaffer, who helped write the rules, said that the city’s construction workers are short on jobs.

“Do data centers drive a lot of permanent jobs? No. Do they drive more jobs than vacant space? Absolutely,” she said, according to MPR News.

All members of the Minneapolis City Council are Democrats, except for Wonsely who sits as an independent affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

Frey would veto the package if it included the stricter amendments from the city’s planning commission, Council Member Linea Palmisano said Monday, according to MPR News. His office told the outlet before Thursday’s vote that he “supports the regulatory framework” of the compromise approved Monday.

The final version limits data centers to either of two overlay districts downtown, KSTP reported. The council will have to approve each new data center, Fox 9 reported.

Council Member Jamal Osman said city staff and colleagues told him Frey would veto an overlay district, according to MPR News. Council members said they were confident Frey would approve the ordinance, KARE 11 reported.

Council members added the approval requirement Thursday and plan to meet again Nov. 20 to take up a possible veto, MPR News reported.

The city’s current moratorium, which has paused most new data centers for six months, expires Nov. 21 and never applied to downtown projects smaller than 350,000 square feet, MPR News reported.

“Xcel Energy has served data centers in downtown Minneapolis and elsewhere on our distribution system for more than 15 years, although we are seeing increased interest today,” the utility said in a statement to the DCNF. “New loads on the grid, such as data centers, can actually put downward pressure on customer rates by spreading fixed system costs across a broader number of customers.”

“The City of Minneapolis is once again making a bad situation worse,” Darren Nelson, a policy fellow at the Minnesota-based Center of the American Experiment, said in a statement to the DCNF. “They are trying to force data centers into ’empty office and commercial buildings,’ that their Woke policies created.”

Nelson also pointed to research from the Electric Power Research Institute. The group’s study estimated that growth in data centers lowered average residential power rates by about 6 percent from 2019 to 2024.

“People in the Twin Cities, and state of Minnesota, should be worried about affordability, but not because of data centers,” he said.

Oakland’s council approved the extension unanimously, the Oaklandside reported. Fife, who wrote it, said that the 10 months will give the city time to look at how data centers affect Oakland and come up with rules.

“We’re seeing an uprising across the country when it comes to how data centers are operating,” Fife said during the meeting.

Richmond and San Francisco have also paused new data centers, according to the outlet.

The city got about 1,600 written comments on the rules, and almost half of them asked for an outright ban, an MPR News analysis found.

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