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On Tuesday city of Asheville staff will present a “framework” on plans for a temporary, one-year pause on approvals for data center development.
Asheville is the latest community in western North Carolina to consider a moratorium on new data center construction. If enacted, Asheville would be following other cities like Boone, Canton and Woodfin, as well as counties like Swain and Clay.
Data centers, broadly, are physical facilities that house data in the form of servers – and a large amount of energy and water can be required to power and cool those servers. They can vary in size and format, but a spate of new, larger facilities, fueled by accelerating computing needs of artificial intelligence, have given some communities pause.
These “hyperscalers” are largely unregulated at the federal level. While North Carolina currently offers tax incentives for companies promising to locate a data center in the state, new efforts by Gov. Josh Stein and state Republicans have indicated some second thoughts, with one bill proposing to prohibit local tax incentives for the facilities and force Duke to protect ratepayers as their electricity demand increases strain on the grid.
Asheville City Council member Maggie Ullman says that the intention of the moratorium is to give Council space to understand the phenomenon and how the community can address it. She and other council members and staff are still trying to break down the differences between data center sizes and their potential impacts to community and environment.
“What it would take to regulate these is to have an explicit legal definition of a data center,” Ullman says. “We don't have that yet.”
The moratorium period would ideally last a year, says Ullman, at which point the city would decide on a more permanent course of action.
According to city attorney Brad Branham, Asheville has no definition currently for data centers within its development ordinance, which means it lacks the necessary zoning classifications to regulate them.
“Like so many other local governments throughout the State, the City of Asheville believes that it must act now to ensure any future data center development would only occur within the City under specific rules and regulations so as to protect the public, our infrastructure, and our natural resources,” Branham said in an email.
The council will vote on the moratorium at its meeting on June 26.
