Artificial intelligence data centers have been a hot topic in Utah this summer, and reforms could be on the way.
Gov. Spencer Cox told reporters at his Aug. 20 monthly news conference to expect efforts to change the approval process and additional regulation for data centers when lawmakers return to Capitol Hill in January.
Central to that move toward reform, he said, was the contentious Stratos Project in Box Elder County, which experienced incredible public pushback earlier this year.
“The process was not good, and the MIDA process, especially,” he said. “I think we need major reform when it comes to MIDA, and I will be pushing for that reform moving forward.”
The Military Installation Development Authority first approved the Stratos Project in April. The independent agency can bypass local land use rules within certain project boundaries. Cox said its board is aware of the push to reevaluate the authority’s scope and believes that they would be receptive to some degree of change. In particular, Cox is looking for elected officials to have “a little bit more of a say in what happens there than what we've had in the past.”
“We have a lot of independent entities in this state, and they're great. They play a very important role, but we've also delegated a lot of authority there,” he said. “The people are going to hold us accountable for what those entities do, and we need to make sure that we have insight and some say in what it is they're doing, what projects they're taking on, and are they the right projects for our state.”
In the wake of the uproar over the Box Elder project, Cox issued an executive order in May calling for higher standards for data center approvals.
The public largely supports more oversight, too. During an Aug. 19 interim legislative committee, public comment overwhelmingly opposed data center development.
Murray resident Allison Barton said the public needs non-biased examinations of projects to have confidence in the process.
“Like many others here, I would like for there to be independent studies on data centers, particularly with regard to water,” she said, “And I would like this to be a requirement and independent of any developer's analysis.”
Barton and others also raised concerns about their environmental effects on the Great Salt Lake, air quality and overall water conditions in the state following the driest winter on record.
Although the discourse around data centers has exploded in recent months, it isn’t a new issue for lawmakers. The Legislature passed a law requiring water use disclosures for the facilities earlier this year. However, it only applies to large-scale projects that use 75 acre-feet of water or more per year. One acre-foot of water is approximately 32,581 gallons.
Cox said he has “no problem whatsoever” supporting expanded legislation to include so-called closed-loop systems that are more water efficient, because “we want to make sure everybody knows what these data centers are using.”
Going a step further, he even said he’d be open to requiring all future data center proposals to use closed-loop cooling.
“If I felt I could do it with executive authority, I would have done it already,” he said. “That's the best technology available.”
That regulation and others could come during the 2027 legislative session, which starts Jan. 20.
Cox’s sentiment echoed what state officials told lawmakers this week. Utah Office of Energy Development Deputy Director Jake Garfield said that because of the state’s water-strapped nature, adopting new technologies — and doing it fast — is in everyone’s best interest.
“I think that is just a necessity in a state with very constrained water resources and a very constrained airshed,” Garfield said. “There's no special carve-outs. There's no shortcuts for data center developers.”
