San Francisco approves 45-day data centre ban halting expansions in Bayview and Dogpatch

San Francisco halts data centre development

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted unanimously on 6 October 2026 to institute a 45-day moratorium on new data centres. The measure, which supervisors can extend up to 22 months, takes effect immediately in the city where OpenAI and Anthropic are based. Authored by District 10 Supervisor Shamann Walton and co-sponsored by Connie Chan, Jackie Fielder and Cheyenne Chen, the ordinance directs planners to evaluate impacts on energy, water, air quality and land use before a November hearing.

We need to know what these impacts are. Until we know what that is, it needs to stop.

The freeze affects two active developments. NOVVA applied to expand its 400 Paul Avenue facility in Bayview from 9 megawatts to 36 megawatts, while a 49.5-megawatt project in Dogpatch held permit discussions with Mayor Daniel Lurie's staff in August. Supervisors identified Bayview-Hunters Point as already overburdened by air pollution, choosing to halt progress while the city attempts to establish a comprehensive count of existing facilities.

Industry resistance and national pushback

San Francisco joins broader local pushback across the United States. According to Data Center Watch, dozens of projects face delays or rejections, while Amazon Web Services reports over 100 data centre moratoriums under consideration nationwide. In response, Amazon announced its Built Together initiative, pledging $1 billion over five years to support education, workforce training and energy efficiency projects across host communities.

If these measures are enacted, the U.S. could be writing its own losing ticket to this race, and the consequences would last generations.

Amazon previously abandoned a data centre project near Maryland's Calvert Cliffs nuclear facility following local resistance. The disputes come during a massive infrastructure push: a Brookings report projects $10.3 trillion in US data centre and AI infrastructure investment between 2025 and 2032, representing 3.63% of annual gross domestic product. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimates data centres consumed 4.7% of US electricity in 2024, forecasting 11.8% by 2030.

Power grid constraints across Europe

US municipal opposition follows grid capacity bottlenecks across Europe, where operators restricted facilities over power supply constraints. In Ireland, the Central Statistics Office recorded data centres taking 23% of metered electricity in 2025, up from 5% in 2015. South Dublin County Council refused Google permission for a third facility at Grange Castle in 2024 due to grid limitations.

In Denmark, grid operator Energinet halted connection agreements amid a 60-gigawatt queue against a 7-gigawatt peak demand. In the United Kingdom, Nscale's £2 billion Essex development cannot secure 90 megawatts for its 2027 opening, with British grid waiting times reaching nearly a decade.

Pooling unused computing capacity

With physical construction facing obstacles, software groups are seeking alternative capacity. The National Compute Grid, led by Amp executive Anjney Midha, plans to aggregate computing power across research labs and cloud providers through a shared scheduler. Consortium data indicates independent single-tenant data centres average under 15% net computing utilization, leaving chips idle between training runs. The network holds 760 megawatts of connected or visible capacity, targeting 2 gigawatts by 2030 for commercial and public sector use.