The Colorado Sun reports that Colorado lawmakers have killed Senate Bill 102, an environmentalist-backed attempt to regulate data centers in the state. The bill, carried by Sen. Cathy Kipp of Fort Collins and Rep. Kyle Brown of Louisville, was postponed indefinitely after sponsors tried a last-minute rewrite that added a tax incentive, which still was not enough to save it.
The measure would have required data center companies to cover the full cost of the power needed to run their facilities, while also tying their operations to Colorado’s greenhouse gas reduction goals. It also would have created a limited competition for two 15-year sales and use tax exemptions per year, based on things like clean energy use, water efficiency, grid resiliency, jobs, and community benefits. Translation: a regulatory obstacle course wearing a “public good” name tag.
At the same time, a separate industry-backed bill offering 20- to 30-year sales and use tax exemptions to data center companies also died. So, for now, Colorado has no new statewide data center incentives and no new data-center-specific environmental restrictions. Sometimes the legislature accidentally improves public policy by failing to pass anything.
The Bullet Point Brief
- Senate Bill 102, Sen. Cathy Kipp’s data center regulation bill, died unanimously in the Senate Transportation and Energy Committee after she asked for it to be postponed indefinitely. That is legislative code for “this thing is cooked.”
- The bill started as an environmental regulation package, then got a last-minute tax incentive stapled onto it in hopes of finding votes. Nothing says “principled policy” like frantically duct-taping a giveaway to a green scolding session.
- Kipp says she will bring the bill back next session because data center companies need to understand “the moment.” I have been on the receiving end of Senator Kipp’s screech, and trust me, nobody needs a second helping of “the moment.”
- A competing data center bill backed by the industry also died. That one would have offered long-term sales and use tax exemptions to companies investing at least $250 million and creating jobs paying at least 110% of the local average wage. Because apparently multinational mega-corporations are just one tax break away from scraping by.
- The Colorado Sun notes that both bills dying leaves Colorado without state-level data center incentives or industry-specific environmental rules. Around here, we call that a rare legislative two-fer.
My Bottom Line
Colorado got lucky. Not because data centers are perfect. They are not. They use electricity. They use water. They raise serious land-use questions. Communities deserve honest answers before someone drops a concrete techno-bunker next to their homes and calls it economic development.
But Sen. Kipp’s bill was never really about getting those answers. It had far more to do with virtue signaling to the environmental left than solving a real policy problem. This was less data center oversight and more climate-theater cardio. The kind where everybody sweats, nobody builds anything useful, and the activists clap because somebody said “greenhouse gas” with sufficient moral panic.
The industry-backed bill was not much better. I am not convinced Colorado needs to bribe multi-billion-dollar, and in some cases trillion-dollar, multinational corporations to show up and do business. They can afford to pay their taxes. If a project pencils only because taxpayers grease the skids, maybe the project is not the economic miracle its lobbyists claim it is.
And land use? That belongs close to the people who live with the consequences. Local governments, local communities, local accountability. Not a statewide political tug-of-war between environmental scolds and corporate subsidy hunters. Two data center bills went into the legislature. Both died. For once, the taxpayers, ratepayers, and local control all made it out alive.
Source: The Colorado Sun
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