Following a handful of other Bay Area cities, the Oakland City Council approved a 45-day moratorium on new data center projects Tuesday.
With a 7-0 vote, the council approved Councilmember Carroll Fife's proposal to enact a pause on all approvals related to data center development.
The goal of the moratorium is to give city staff and council members some time to draft planning and land-use regulations that take various environmental and infrastructural impacts into account.
The Oaklandside reports the city hasn’t seen a boom in data center construction, likely because of Oakland’s high real estate prices and electricity rates. However, a developer hasproposed building a data center in a downtown building that used to house a supercomputer.
Tuesday's vote follows similar moves by other Bay Area cities, including San Francisco, Gilroy, Richmond and Oakley. Hayward is also considering its own data center moratorium.
