Oakland extends its pause on new data centers to October 2027

The City Council voted unanimously to stretch a 45-day moratorium by 10 months and 15 days while planners study what large computing facilities would mean for Oakland’s grid, water, air and neighborhoods.

By Desmond Akers

Oakland will not approve any new data centers for nearly another year. The City Council voted unanimously on Tuesday to extend a temporary moratorium on land-use approvals and agreements for data centers by 10 months and 15 days, keeping it in place until Oct. 5, 2027, The Oaklandside reported.

The pause, first adopted unanimously on Oct. 6 for 45 days, had been set to expire on Nov. 20. It is not a permanent ban. It suspends new approvals while city staff study the facilities and decide whether Oakland’s zoning and planning rules need to change, and the council can lift it early if new regulations are adopted.

What the council approved

The measure, file No. 27-0178, is an interim emergency ordinance under the City Charter and Section 65858 of the California Government Code, the state law that lets cities freeze certain approvals while they write rules. That law requires a four-fifths vote to extend such a freeze and caps the total at two years. Its sponsors are Councilmember Carroll Fife, whose District 3 includes downtown and West Oakland, and the Planning and Building Department.

In an agenda report, Ms. Fife wrote that the city’s infrastructure was not designed for the “extraordinary” demands of large-scale data centers, and that “data centers have the potential to impose significant negative impacts on local water and electrical resources, air quality, and community livability.” Oakland’s planning code does not specifically define data centers or set rules for their water efficiency, energy use, noise, backup generators or environmental protections, the report said.

“It was imperative that I take immediate action to protect Oakland residents from what we’ve seen in other parts of the country,” Ms. Fife said at the meeting.

One project on hold

The moratorium has already stopped at least one proposal. In August, the Danville-based developer Behring Co. proposed converting about 20,000 square feet of a four-story building at 415 20th St. downtown into a data center, Oakland North reported. The 45-day pause suspended that project, NBC Bay Area reported. City officials have received other inquiries about data centers in new and existing buildings, according to Ms. Fife’s report, which did not name the companies involved.

The extension now holds that project and any others for most of 2027. The Inquirer did not find a public statement from Behring Co. on the extension.

The case for and against

Dozens of residents spoke in favor of the extension on Tuesday, citing electricity and water use and air and noise pollution. Cathy Leonard, a District 1 resident, warned that West Oakland seniors and children, who she said already experience higher rates of asthma and cancer, would bear more of it. Care 4 Community Action, a civic group that grew out of Ms. Fife’s 2020 campaign, said its canvassers spoke with 424 West Oakland residents last month and that 73 percent supported a full ban on new artificial intelligence data centers; the survey was conducted by an advocacy group, not an independent pollster.

Not everyone agreed. Mindy Pechenuk, a District 4 resident and former mayoral candidate, told the council that data centers could bring jobs for young people and economic activity, and suggested that a developer could build one at the former Oakland Army Base. In October, she called the initial moratorium a waste of taxpayer money. Ms. Fife herself has acknowledged that data centers have operated in Oakland for years; her concern, she told a council committee in September, is the newer, more resource-intensive facilities driven by artificial intelligence, which can rely on diesel or other fossil-fuel backup generators.

What staff will study

The council also accepted a staff report, required by state law, on what the Planning and Building Department has done since October. Staff have reviewed data center rules in San Francisco, San Jose, Richmond, Los Angeles and other California cities, along with studies by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Kapor Foundation. They have begun consulting PG&E, the East Bay Municipal Utility District and Ava Community Energy about how future facilities could affect Oakland’s electricity and water supplies. A public website on the process is tentatively planned for late November.

A regional pattern

Oakland is part of a wider pullback. Gilroy, Richmond and San Francisco have adopted their own moratoriums, while San Jose and Santa Clara, the Bay Area’s established data center hubs, are reviewing their rules on energy, water and environmental effects. The decisions are local, but the stakes are statewide: how and where these facilities connect to the grid shapes the power planning of utilities that serve millions of Californians, and those that use water for cooling draw on supplies that districts like EBMUD must plan for in dry years.

The offices of Ms. Fife and Council President Kevin Jenkins, and the city’s public information office, did not respond to questions sent Tuesday before the vote.