Newsom promotes climate leadership abroad, blocks data center transparency at home
At the United Nations climate summit in Brazil, Gov. Gavin Newsom emphasized California’s role as the world’s fourth-largest economy and touted the state’s leadership in artificial intelligence, saying the state “dominates” in AI while stressing that he is “deeply mindful” of the energy and water implications of technological innovation and entrepreneurial growth.
But his record tells a more complicated story when it comes to addressing the environmental effects of AI expansion.
Just last month, Assembly Bill 93, which would have required data centers to report both projected and actual annual water use to their local water suppliers, was passed by the Legislature but vetoed by Newsom, who at the time said he was “reluctant to impose rigid reporting requirements about operational details ... without understanding the full impact on the businesses and the consumers of their technology.”
Sean Bothwell, executive director of California Coastkeeper Alliance, who worked closely with Assemblymember Diane Papan, D–San Mateo, on drafting the bill, said he was “incredibly surprised” by the veto, calling it a missed opportunity for California to get ahead of the growing water demands of AI infrastructure.
“That bill was really a transparency bill. There weren’t a lot of onerous requirements, and it was really just to lay the foundation so we knew the water demand that AI centers were using,” Bothwell said.
“It just confirmed my concerns throughout his governorship — that the image of being pro-tech is more important than preserving our water supply.”
Soaring energy and water use
As AI advances rapidly, the large-scale data centers that are extremely water and energy intensive are growing rapidly. Across the United States, these facilities already accounted for about 4.4% of total national electricity use in 2023, and could consume between 6.7% and 12% by 2028, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
“Up until this past few months … a lot of the data centers that were coming online were residing in municipally owned utilities, and those typically do not fall under the jurisdiction of state commissions,” said Mckenna Beck, Ralph Cavanagh Climate Solutions fellow at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
In more recent months, however, PG&E and other large investor-owned utilities have begun projecting significant new data-center load in their service territories, prompting growing attention from policymakers, Beck explained. That shift has sparked stronger interest in establishing legislative guardrails, particularly around transparency and reporting requirements.
“A lack of transparency can create systemic uncertainty, and it becomes extremely difficult to estimate the true and complete impacts of data centers, especially from an electricity affordability, reliability and emissions standpoint,” Beck added.
In a recent study conducted by researchers at UC Riverside, the authors found that in just the past few years, data centers in California have seen sharp increases in resource use, with electricity consumption rising by about 95%, carbon emissions nearly doubling and water use climbing roughly 96% — from 25.42 billion liters to 49.91 billion liters — between 2019 and 2023. As demand continues to grow, the researchers warn that the resulting strain on the grid could drive up additional air pollution and related health consequences, especially when fossil fuel plants are needed to meet peak power needs.
But accurately measuring those effects is difficult because there is little publicly available information about how much energy and water these facilities consume — especially colocation centers, which represent more than 95% of California’s data center market, according to Shaolei Ren, one of the study’s authors.
“We just have extremely limited information about the colocation — how much energy they are using, how much water they’re consuming. We simply don’t know,” Ren said.
Transparency fight against Newsom
In October, shortly after Newsom’s veto of AB 93, Papan issued a statement.
“I am deeply disappointed that the Governor chose to veto this measure,” said Papan. “AB 93 represented a reasonable, transparent approach to understanding the massive water demand driven by AI and data center expansion.”
Several other bills addressing data center development moved through the Legislature this year with mixed outcomes. SB 57 was signed into law, directing state energy regulators to study the strain on the electric grid and potential cost shifting tied to data center growth, while two other measures — AB 222, which would have required energy use disclosure, and SB 58, which would have created sales-tax exemptions for certified data centers — stalled and did not advance.
Ailene Voisin, an information officer for the State Water Resources Control Board, told The Sacramento Bee that the agency does not track water use specifically by AI data centers, that the board only monitors water used by water rights holders and public water systems.
“There is no legislation requiring AI data centers specifically to report water usage to the state, and the board does not maintain a list of water-right holders that are explicitly AI data centers,” Voisin said.
The growing urgency for date centers transparency is driven by the scale and speed of new development, which critics say could require additional grid investments, potentially more fossil fuel generation during peak demand and increased diesel generator use.
Experts at the Harvard Electricity Law Initiative warned that under the current practices of utilities and tech companies making private power agreements that aren’t open to the public, the costs of new power plants and grid upgrades could be passed on to households and small businesses instead of the companies driving the growth.
“There’s so many new data centers being built, and most of those developers are providing almost no information to the communities that are actually going to be housing the proposed data center,” said Johanna Fornberg, senior research specialist at Greenpeace USA.
Mandy DeRoche, deputy managing attorney with Earthjustice’s clean energy program, agreed, warning that without transparency and regulatory oversight, communities could be left paying for costly energy infrastructure tied to speculative data center growth.
“There aren’t existing mechanisms to know individual energy use, individual water use. And any one large data center can destabilize surrounding infrastructure,” DeRoche said.
“To regulate in an informed manner, we need information. We need data.”
This story was originally published November 17, 2025 at 11:50 AM.
