Gov. Josh Shapiro signed an executive order Tuesday, August 18, putting new guardrails on data center development across Pennsylvania, an announcement worth watching in a county already fielding interest from developers.
The order requires data center developers to secure approval from local officials before moving forward, pay their own energy costs rather than passing them to ratepayers, meet strict environmental and water-use standards, and be transparent with the communities where they want to build. It also pulls all data center projects out of the state’s fast-track permitting program and bars developers from using nondisclosure agreements tied to their projects.
Shapiro said the state has fielded more than 100 data center proposals over the past year, many of them speculative, and that only a handful have gotten far enough to hold permits. He said some developers have leaned hard on local officials to get their way. “We will not be bullied by these developers,” Shapiro said at the signing.
This is not an abstract issue for our part of the state. Amazon has confirmed it is in talks about a data center campus next to the Homer City Energy Campus in Indiana County, not far from here, tied to the massive gas-fired power plant rising on the old coal site. Under the new order, a project like that would need to clear local approval and meet the same standards before the state moves any permits forward.
Data centers promise jobs and tax revenue, but they also draw enormous amounts of power and water, and residents in communities already approached by developers have raised real concerns about both. Shapiro’s order does not stop data centers from coming to Pennsylvania. It does put the decision more squarely in the hands of the communities being asked to host them.
Worth keeping an eye on, especially if a project ever lands closer to home.