From Watts Up With That?
Essay by Eric Worrall
Essay by Eric Worrall
Hochul: “… They drive up costs for local ratepayers, and I refuse to let those costs get passed down to New Yorkers …”
New York becomes first U.S. state to impose AI data center ban
PUBLISHED TUE, JUL 14 20261:39 PM EDTUPDATED TUE, JUL 14 20262:49 PM EDT
Paxton Honerkamp…
New York State Governor Kathy Hochul on Tuesday signed an executive order barring the construction of new large-scale data centers using 50 megawatts or more of power for up to one year, making the Empire State the first state in the nation to impose such a ban.
“We’re in the midst of one of the most significant economic upheavals in generations … perhaps ever,” the governor said, announcing the executive order in New York City. “These hyperscale AI data centers consume enormous amounts of power, truly threatening to outpace our grid’s capacity,” she added. “They drive up costs for local ratepayers, and I refuse to let those costs get passed down to New Yorkers.”
Hochul’s sentiment echoes that of many state residents and environmental leaders, who have heavily scrutinized hyperscaler data centers on the basis of their excessive consumption of power and natural resources, particularly fresh water.
…
Many, however, voiced their dissatisfaction, claiming that the moratorium would hinder New York’s — and the United States’ – ability to compete in a rapidly expanding technological field.
“A statewide moratorium is the wrong answer to the right questions,” New York State Assemblyman Scott Gray, a Republican, and three of his colleagues wrote in a letter to the governor in June opposing data center moratoriums. “It freezes investment, takes decisions away from the communities that should be making them and duplicates or ignores work the governor’s own administration already has underway.”
…Read more: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/14/new-york-ai-data-center-ban.html
New York is right to fear the impact of AI on energy prices and availability – but only because of their policy of self inflicted green energy sabotage.
This decision to prioritise ideology over prosperity will further cement New York’s decline as a center of global finance.
Serious financial trading companies spare no expense when it comes to specialised software to help them gain a market advantage. AI is just the latest innovation in a long history of massive financial market investment in technology. But in a trading environment where milliseconds matter, traders need their automated systems to be located physically as close as possible to the exchanges where the trades are being executed.
Co-Location: How Close Can You Get?
The rise of co-location services offered by stock exchanges is a response to firms trying to minimize their remote connectivity and instead place their trading logic closer to the markets.
In the early days, firms would place systems in third-party facilities as close as possible to the exchanges’ own sites.
Today, exchanges allow customers to use their own data centers, in the interest of creating a level playing field, so firms are able to place equipment meters from the exchange systems.“Almost all exchanges are now offering so-called co-location services, whereby the servers of the participants are co-located in the data center of the exchange and in the immediate physical vicinity of the exchange’s matching engine(s),” said Philip Enness, director of markets infrastructure at IBM. “The link between the servers is optimized through the use of infiniband technology, thus achieving the lowest possible latency for the participants.”
…Read more: https://www.marketsmedia.com/co-location-how-close-can-you-get/
Hochul’s new regulation stands squarely in the way of how financial traders want to conduct their business. How can New York possibly continue to be a center of global finance, if traders aren’t allowed to operate the energy intensive tools they need to remain competitive?
Thankfully Texas may be on the brink of offering an attractive alternative to trading on the increasingly unfriendly New York Stock Exchange.
Texas Stock Exchange officially opens
Bethany Blankley
July 8, 2026(The Center Square) – The Texas Stock Exchange officially opened Monday, fulfilling a longtime goal of Gov. Greg Abbott, who’s championed Texas leading the financial industry.
Based in Dallas, it opened at 8:30 a.m. Monday to members, including approved broker-dealers, banks and trading firms. Trades are test stocks only. Throughout the month, a phased rollout of symbols for thousands of stocks and equities are coming online, allowing members of the public to trade.
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Live trading begins Friday, July 10.
…With more businesses relocating their headquarters and operations to Texas, financial firms expanding their operations in Dallas, and the expected growth of the TXSE, the goal is for Dallas to become a national financial hub, Abbott and TXSE leaders say.
This includes providing a superior alternative to the New York Stock Exchange, which has embraced policies problematic for shareholders including so-called Environmental, Social, Governance and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies, critics of the NYSE argue.
…Read more: https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/texas-stock-exchange-officially-opens-164400647.html
How is Texas dealing with balancing community concerns about the negative impact of data centers with their desire to encourage investment?
Hundreds of data centers are coming to Texas. Here’s what you need to know
Texas is experiencing an AI-driven data center boom with at least 248 projects planned statewide. Here’s what to know about the industry’s rapid growth and the debate over its impact.
Alejandra Martinez, Texas Tribune | Posted On June 26, 2026, 8:39 AM
In the span of a couple years, hundreds of massive electricity- and water-hungry data centers have proposed construction in Texas — a veritable gold rush for those capitalizing on the sudden demand for artificial intelligence infrastructure.
There are at least 248 data center projects planned across the state, according to a Texas Tribune recent analysis.
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Gov. Greg Abbott recently moved from calling Texas an “epicenter” of AI development to announcing he would make regulating the industry a priority for state lawmakers during the 2027 legislative session.
…Why are data centers coming to Texas?
Texas has been a magnet for developers because of the cheap land, available power, fiber lines and, importantly, its lack of local business restrictions.
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Texas has shifted from aggressively courting data centers to tightening oversight. In June, Gov. Greg Abbott directed public utilities to ensure that the infrastructure costs required to construct and serve data centers are not passed on to its customers. He also released sweeping regulatory recommendations on data centers, including repealing data center sales tax exemptions — that costs the state more than a billion dollars a year — and “other outdated or unnecessary incentives for data centers.”
State leaders and the grid operator, ERCOT, are revising its planning and approval process to keep pace with requests from data centers trying to connect to the electrical grid. The agency is implementing stricter vetting for massive energy projects.
Seems sensible to me – working to facilitate billions of dollars of high paying jobs and investment, while working to minimise the negative impacts on Texan communities.
Given the obvious Texan enthusiasm for taking up the torch of being the USA’s premier industrial, investment and financial center, and the stampede of major companies which are relocating to Texas and Florida, I can’t help thinking New York City and New York State might be on the brink of learning a hard lesson on what happens to jurisdictions which take their wealth creators for granted, or which place green ideology ahead of prosperity.
Given regulatory instability in China, and long term declines in activity on major European based trading exchanges like London and Frankfurt, energy rich and business friendly Texas has a real chance of becoming the premier global financial center if they play their cards right.
Some day New York will realise what their obstructionism and green intransigence has cost them. But by then it will be too late.
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