US Government Reportedly Allowing Federal Data Center Rules to Expire

Posted by 01-_- 1 day ago

Comments

Comment by JumpCrisscross 1 day ago

We had this law for three years. What did it actually do?

Comment by jfengel 1 day ago

It told the government how to go about building its own data centers. Which meant things like deciding what to build, where, what environmental impacts to consider, etc.

Comment by JumpCrisscross 1 day ago

Do we have evidence of what it did? The benefits? The costs? For sunsetting legislation, we should be able to point to something more concrete than vibes being off for datacenters in general.

Comment by CGMthrowaway 1 day ago

Added costs (waste). Created government jobs.

Comment by iAMkenough 1 day ago

Not sure what environmental impacts you expect to see the policy to have achieved in three years, but I'm sure we won't truly know the impact until the next future administration that supports environmental science.

Comment by JumpCrisscross 1 day ago

> Not sure what environmental impacts you expect to see the policy to have achieved in three years

I’m asking for evidence of any impact. Was something built or not built? Was the design modified? Did it become more efficient, even if just on paper?

If the law literally did nothing we can measure for three years, I’m not sure it’s worth the political capital to keep alive.

Comment by 1 day ago

Comment by danaris 1 day ago

I'm not sure you can draw a conclusion like that, especially given that roughly half that time has been under the Trump administration, which really doesn't care about regulations on what it does.

If the policy is about what to do and not to do when building a new datacenter, I could easily believe that the government...didn't actually build any new datacenters during the three years it was in effect, so it hasn't had a chance to have any impact.

Comment by 1 day ago