“We are building a lot more data centers faster than we ever did — and a new AI data center is 10 to 20, maybe 30 times, the size of the largest data centers we had before,” Masanet said. Data Center Map, a nongovernmental website that tracks data centers across the world, lists 289 facilities in California, with more than 4,000 nationwide. The federal government has, so far, largely left it to states or localities to regulate data centers. Power companies that have to upgrade grids to meet data centers’ energy demands sometimes seek to recoup that cost by hiking up rates for all consumers. The debate over data centers is heating up in the Imperial Valley, a rural desert region in southeastern California.

Source: Los Angeles Times March 24, 2026 01:01 UTC