by Laura Glesby
As pushback accelerates across the country against data centers powering artificial intelligence, the Board of Alders on Tuesday unanimously approved a year-long moratorium on new data centers in New Haven.
The legislation carves out an exception for “quantum computing or life sciences research facilities associated with the New Haven Quantum and Life Sciences Innovation Cluster” — a series of planned developments along the former Route 34 corridor, slated to house quantum computing technology and currently funded by a state Innovation Cluster grant.
The city has not yet seen any bids to develop AI data centers, and data center developers have typically sought out larger parcels of land than what is likely to become available in New Haven.
Still, alders and city staff said that a temporary moratorium is worthwhile to prevent any unanticipated developments, while enabling city staff to review existing zoning law and potentially draft more permanent regulations.
Across the country, AI data centers have drawn ire from nearby residents and environmental advocates for the massive amounts of water and energy they consume.
Board of Alders Legislation Committee Chair and Majority Leader Richard Furlow had authored the legislation, drawing from moratoria passed in a few other Connecticut towns and cities, including Groton and West Haven.
At an August Legislation Committee hearing on the moratorium, Furlow recalled how vape shops proliferated across the city before the zoning code was amended to acknowledge e-cigarettes in addition to tobacco products. “We didn’t consider the possibilities of what could happen” with e-cigarettes until vaping became commonplace, Furlow said.
“It’s always good to act in caution… It’s better to be safe than sorry,” said Furlow.
After Tuesday’s meeting, Westville Alder Adam Marchand made the case that even though New Haven is currently an unlikely candidate for an AI data center, a moratorium would help prevent any surprise developments.
He referenced a skyscraper-style, 20-story data center currently proposed for the downtown area of Kansas City, Mo. He also pointed to the now-demolished 70,000-square-foot Sports Haven building as a site that could theoretically house a relatively small data center.
At the August Legislation Committee meeting, City Plan Director Laura Brown said that her team plans to use the 12-month moratorium to evaluate whether existing zoning regulations should be updated to account for the scale and resource-intensive nature of modern data centers associated with AI.
The zoning code currently regulates “data processing center or services,” defined as “establishments primarily involved in the compiling, storage, and maintenance of documents, records, and other types of information in digital form utilizing a main frame computer.”
Data processing centers are prohibited in most of the city, per current zoning rules. If not for the moratorium, they would be allowed as-of-right in light and heavy industrial zones, which exist in parts of the Annex, Fair Haven, Quinnipiac Meadows, Mill River, the Hill, and small parcels in Dixwell and Newhallville. They would also be allowed in the “transit oriented community” zone that applies to Union Station.
According to Brown, a year-long period “is what the law supports” for a temporary moratorium on particular developments.
The quantum-focused exception was added at the suggestion of city staff, “out of an abundance of caution,” said Economic Development Administrator Mike Piscitelli. The city did not want the data center moratorium to unintentionally stall quantum-related developments.
Carter Winstanley, the developer behind a planned quantum technology hub at 2 Church St., said that the anticipated quantum computer in that building will be “radically different” from the data centers associated with artificial intelligence, “in both size of compute and size of facility.”
“An AI-based data center has hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of computers all computing in parallel, whereas we’re talking about one or two or a small handful of quantum computers,” Winstanley said.
“So many of the data centers that people are talking about are 2 million square feet or larger,” he said, “whereas this is a facility that is one tenth of that” in terms of square footage.
According to CNBC, industry analysts believe that quantum computers would not only consume significantly less energy than an AI data center, but could even reduce the environmental footprint of artificial intelligence.
On Tuesday, all of the alders present voted in favor of the moratorium.
The pause “will allow the city time,” said Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison, “to consider the environmental and land use impacts of these large scale data centers and support further study of the issues they present.”
Morris Cove Alder Leland Moore expressed “serious concerns” about how data centers have impacted “utility costs and our environment.”
“The landscape of data centers and AI is developing so rapidly,” said Downtown/Yale Alder Elias Theodore. “I don’t think we as a city and country understand fully the impact it can have on the environment, on the workforce.”
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