The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has unanimously approved a 45-day moratorium on data center approvals, pausing new projects citywide until comprehensive regulations are in place. KTVU reports it is the first such ban by any Bay Area county. Supervisor Shamann Walton of District 10, who authored the measure, said no new data centers should be approved before the city understands their full impact on communities.
The measure is an urgency ordinance, which requires four-fifths of the board — nine votes — to pass. On Oct. 5, the board's Land Use and Transportation Committee advanced an amended 45-day interim zoning moratorium 3-0, sending it to the full board, which then approved it unanimously. During the freeze, the city will study data centers' energy demand, water use, air quality, land use and community effects before writing permanent rules.
"We need to know all the impacts of having a data center in the community before we allow another to come inside of San Francisco," Walton said at a City Hall press conference. The official justification: approving more facilities without comprehensive regulations in place poses "an immediate threat to public health, safety, and welfare." San Francisco County currently has 15 data centers, five of them concentrated in Bayview-Hunters Point, a neighborhood with a long history of bearing disproportionate pollution — and the immediate trigger was a proposed facility next to the Cow Palace.
The 45 days are only the starting point: under the city's urgency-ordinance rules, the freeze can be extended up to 220 days. Nor does it cover just new construction — power upgrades for existing data centers fall under the freeze as well. In effect, the Bay Area's AI capital has hit pause on nearly all compute-related building for the coming months.
San Francisco is not alone. Oakland's City Council is weighing its own 45-day temporary moratorium, with protesters already gathered outside City Hall over water consumption and neighborhood impacts; Richmond's council has already voted to approve one. Across California, Monterey Park became the first U.S. city to permanently ban data centers by popular vote in June, Los Angeles County froze approvals in unincorporated areas, and Imperial County, Desert Hot Springs, Palm Springs and Tulare County have enacted moratoriums while Coachella banned the facilities outright. Fresno's council is moving toward a ban and San Joaquin County is weighing one. A July Public Policy Institute of California poll found 73 percent of Californians oppose building data centers in their communities; a May Gallup poll found nearly seven in ten Americans oppose one near their homes.
Elsewhere in the Bay Area, Santa Clara has taken the opposite path. The city of about 133,000 hosts 56 data centers with two more in development — the densest cluster on the West Coast — contributing $35 million a year in taxes to the general fund. Its municipal utility, Silicon Valley Power, charges 18.2 cents per kilowatt-hour, 57 percent less than Pacific Gas & Electric's 42.2 cents. Even Santa Clara, though, stopped accepting new data center power applications in 2023 and launched a year-long interdepartmental review. Data centers currently consume about 2 percent of California's electricity, a share expected to double within a decade, and Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation days ago tightening state oversight of the facilities — making San Francisco's freeze the latest chapter in California's statewide fight over computing power and community.