Council President Zeke Cohen wants to ban data centers in Baltimore — temporarily

City Council President Zeke Cohen wants to ban data center development in Baltimore for at least a year.

The Democrat said Monday he is introducing legislation that would temporarily block the construction of data centers that use at least 10 megawatts. A yearlong pause would give state lawmakers and regulators more time to hash out how Maryland approaches these electricity-guzzling facilities.

Nobody wants to be a Luddite, Cohen said in an interview Monday, but he doesn’t want Baltimore to rush into something without a better understanding of its financial and environmental impacts.

“I don’t want to sacrifice my neighbors to the altar of data centers,” he said.

Data centers have rapidly become a political flash point as people across the country are opening their mail to find surging energy bills. The giant computer warehouses, which have multiplied as artificial intelligence becomes more widely used, require massive amounts of energy, water and land.

State lawmakers have introduced bills this year to regulate data center development in Maryland, including some that propose a broad moratorium.

Gov. Wes Moore, though, has argued that Maryland can attract the data center industry without the downsides of places like Northern Virginia’s Data Center Alley. Legislation backed by Moore and top Democrats in Annapolis would encourage but not force data center developers to use a local workforce and to mitigate their reliance on the grid.

Maryland’s ratepayer advocate has warned that data centers in Northern Virginia and Maryland will strain the mid-Atlantic’s electrical grid and raise customers’ bills due to the need for transmission upgrades.

The Baltimore County Council unanimously voted in February to temporarily ban data center development while the county’s planning board studies the issue. Prince George’s County last year issued a pause when a proposed development on the site of an old shopping mall caused an uproar.

In Baltimore, the most likely target for a major new data center appears to be vacant land on the stalled mega-development site in South Baltimore known as Baltimore Peninsula.

The project’s former developer, MaryAnne Gilmartin of MAG Partners, said last year that the site had been “getting a lot of data center interest.”

“That’s because we have a lot of land, we’ve got access to power,” Gilmartin told Bisnow, a commercial real estate trade publication.

The comment went largely unnoticed for months. But recently, concerns over a data center there have ignited criticism of Baltimore Gas and Electric for escalating utility bills.

Small-business owner Bobby LaPin, who has a large social media following, made a video about the possibility of a data center there — and how it could impact energy bills. The video drew more than 160,000 views and thousands of comments on Instagram.

LaPin is running against Senate President Bill Ferguson, whose district includes Baltimore Peninsula, in the June 23 Democratic primary.

Ferguson has pushed state legislation that could effectively kill the possibility of a data center at Baltimore Peninsula.

The area is covered by a tax increment financing district, an incentive originally intended for a project helmed by Under Armour founder and CEO Kevin Plank. Ferguson’s bill would block data center development in any area of Baltimore covered by a tax increment financing district.

Ferguson and other officials also pressured BGE to pause its plans for a controversial transmission project in South Baltimore that would’ve cost more than $500 million — and would drive up utility bills.

Cohen said it’s important that large-load customers like data centers be required to pay their own electrical infrastructure costs, not saddle ratepayers with them.

Banner reporters Bria Overs and Adam Willis contributed to this story.