Gloria piles a data center ban on top of Sacramento's red tape, for political points

"What are we doing about data centers?" Mayor Todd Gloria asked in a video he posted Thursday. His answer: an executive order "temporarily stopping new data centers in San Diego" until the city writes rules.

The San Diego City Council takes it up Monday. It should vote no.

Piling on Sacramento

Gloria says the city must "put clear rules in place" before any data center is built. Sacramento has already buried the industry in them.

On Sept. 21, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed seven data center bills that his office bragged were the most comprehensive in the nation. They add electricity and water reporting mandates, new rate rules, water disclosure requirements and tougher environmental review. California is already one of the hardest states in the country to build anything in, and Newsom just made data centers harder still.

Gloria's answer is to stack a ban on top.

He can't even claim it's about utility bills or water. By the governor's own account, the state package "will prevent data centers from shifting costs onto everyday ratepayers," and "any upgrades needed to supply water would be paid for by the data center." Those are the mayor's stated worries, and Sacramento says it has already dealt with them.

So what is the ban for? Politics. Gloria signed it the same day activists and council members rallied against data centers at City Hall. It's a show for the doomers who treat every server farm as a threat, not a policy that solves anything.

It misses the project that started this

The push for a ban came after news that a developer was exploring a large data center on the Navy's NAVWAR campus near Old Town. That is federal land. The city's own announcement concedes that facilities "located on State or federal property" are "outside the City's local land-use authority."

So the one project that drew a City Hall rally isn't covered. What the moratorium does stop is private investment on private land inside the city, where builders have to follow city zoning, state law and the new rules anyway.

San Diegans already pay some of the highest rates in America

SDG&E residential customers pay roughly 45 cents per kilowatt-hour, according to state regulators' reports. The national average is about 18 cents. Much of what we pay goes to fixed costs: wildfire protection, transmission lines and grid upkeep.

Those costs are spread over every kilowatt-hour sold. When large customers buy more power and pay their own way, those fixed costs are spread more thinly. Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that over the past five years, rising electricity demand generally kept prices down. They also warned that sudden spikes in demand can push prices up in the near term. That is exactly why the new state law makes data centers pay for the grid and generation they need.

Turning away paying customers doesn't lower anyone's bill. It leaves the same fixed costs on fewer customers, and households are the ones left holding them.

San Diego's economy runs on computing

This region's strengths are wireless technology, biotech and defense. Qualcomm, genomics labs and Navy contractors all depend on data being processed and stored somewhere. San Diego already has about a dozen data centers. They pay property taxes, and building them puts electricians and construction crews to work.

Water is the doomers' favorite talking point, and it doesn't hold up. Every data center in the country combined used about 17 billion gallons of water for cooling in 2023, according to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. American farm irrigation consumes about 73 billion gallons a day, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The entire national data center industry uses less water in a year than irrigation does in under six hours. Newer facilities cool with closed loops that reuse the same water, or with air. And if one needs a new water line, state law makes it pay for that too.

As for housing, data centers go in industrial zones, not on land set aside for homes. If the mayor wants more housing, he should speed up housing permits.

"Temporary" can mean two years

Under state law, a city can adopt an interim moratorium for 45 days, then extend it twice, for close to two years in total. Each step takes a four-fifths vote of the council. On a nine-member council, that means two members can stop it.

They should. Investors don't wait two years for a city to make up its mind. They go to Arizona, Nevada or Texas, and take the construction jobs, the tax revenue and the paying power customers with them.

San Diego doesn't need another sign on the door saying "closed for business," and it doesn't need its mayor copying Sacramento's worst instincts for applause from the doomers. The council should vote no and let builders get to work.