Rhode Island residents face potential electricity rate impacts as data center expansion stalls at the state level, leaving individual towns to regulate energy-intensive developments.
Deep in the Smithfield woods, overgrown stone foundations mark what remains of Hanton City, an abandoned colonial farming village. Today, those quiet acres sit at the center of a modern conflict over artificial intelligence infrastructure.
When New York enacted a historic statewide moratorium on large data centers, it marked the first state-level pause in a national wave that has seen over 100 municipalities halt new construction. But in Rhode Island, where state lawmakers left the State House in June without taking action, the question of how to handle the data center boom has fallen entirely on local communities.
Ban or incentivize?
The stakes are tied directly to utility bills and natural resources. Data centers consume immense power and water: a single 50-megawatt facility uses roughly as much electricity each month as 63,500 Rhode Island households…