Newsom Signed 7 Data Center Laws Aimed at Your Power Bill

Three of the bills push grid-upgrade costs onto data center operators; another ends their blanket environmental review exemption.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed seven data center bills into law on Monday, September 21, 2026. Three of them move the cost of new electric infrastructure off household ratepayers and onto the companies running the servers, CalMatters reported.

That trio settles a plain question about your monthly bill. A hall of servers needs new lines, a substation, upgrades down the circuit. Somebody pays for them. The answer has been contested enough that cities didn't wait for Sacramento.

Monterey Park, in Los Angeles County, has passed a data center ban. It's one of hundreds of cities nationwide that banned the facilities or reversed approvals after public pushback, the outlet reported.

Three more of the new laws require operators to disclose or estimate how much water and other resources a facility uses. The seventh, Senate Bill 887, ends the blanket environmental review exemption data centers have enjoyed. It also offers faster approval to projects that meet state standards for water and energy conservation.

Last year the governor went the other way. He vetoed a water disclosure bill, citing concern that regulation would slow artificial intelligence growth, and signed only a pared-back environmental study measure, according to CalMatters.

In a written statement, Newsom set the package against President Donald Trump's hands-off posture toward data centers and AI. California, he said, is making sure "those profiting from data centers aren't doing so at our expense."

Trump has pushed to speed the buildout nationwide. He told an invite-only business conference last week that the industry is the oil of the next 20 to 25 years.

The politics behind the shift show up in polling. A Gallup poll in May found that seven in 10 Americans oppose data center construction in their own communities. A July survey by the Public Policy Institute of California found similar opposition in the state, the outlet reported.

Assemblymember Diane Papan, a San Mateo Democrat who wrote two of the signed bills, told CalMatters the atmosphere changed once localities began threatening bans.

The industry says the state is pricing itself out. The Data Center Coalition counts Google, Microsoft and OpenAI among its members. It credits the sector with supporting 665,500 jobs in California in 2024, plus more than $159 billion in economic activity. It puts the 2024 tax contribution at $14.1 billion, federal, state and local combined.

Khara Boender, the group's director of government affairs west, told CalMatters that more work is needed to encourage responsible data center growth and keep the state a competitive market.

The seven bills Newsom signed:

• SB 1168, SB 886 and AB 2383, shifting electric infrastructure costs from residential customers to data center operators
• AB 2469, AB 1577 and AB 2619, requiring disclosures or estimates of water use and other resources
• SB 887, ending blanket environmental review exemptions and fast-tracking projects that meet state water and energy conservation standards

Arnab Pal, executive director of the clean-energy nonprofit Deploy Action, told CalMatters the laws are a good step but not the end of it. The work now moves to implementation, he said, and he expects another round of legislation next year.

Source: calmatters.org, retrieved September 22, 2026.