Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) and Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Delaware) introduced two federal bills to increase transparency around large data center development and give communities independent information on potential impacts. The Data Center Community Empowerment Act would create a program at the U.S. Department of Energy to provide expert advice to state, local, and tribal governments on electricity demand, water use, economic impacts, and projected tax revenues, while explicitly barring the department from recommending project approvals. The Data Center Transparency Act would require the Environmental Protection Agency to report every three months on nationwide water consumption, reuse, water availability impacts, pollutant discharges, and greenhouse gas emissions, while the Energy Information Administration would report at least every six months on energy use and effects on household electricity bills. The bills were assigned to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, respectively.
The bills would establish the first federal mandatory reporting requirements on water and energy use by large data centers, filling an information gap that states have begun addressing individually. Utah already passed a similar water-reporting law this year, and the federal proposals could set a baseline standard that applies uniformly across states where data center development is accelerating.
Utah legislative action on data center transparency is a new state-level policy development not covered in the already-published list. The Deseret News and KSL.com articles appear to be related but KSL provides the direct bill-proposal angle. 1 similar article (Deseret News) covering this event was reviewed but not selected.