Last month, The Seattle Times reported that four companies had approached Seattle City Light about building five large data centers with a combined maximum demand of 369 megawatts — roughly one-third of what the city uses on an average day.
Within a week, City Light said that one company canceled its plans, although the utility didn't identify the company. Microsoft and Amazon said it wasn't them. On Thursday, another developer, Tukwila-based Sabey, told The Times it was pulling out, too.
The company had initially asked for 68 megawatts of power at its existing Tukwila campus within City Light territory.
After further evaluation, we determined the project did not have a clear path forward and was no longer viable, and we formally withdrew the request," Sabey said in an email.
That leaves two companies — Equinix, based in Redwood City, Calif., and Prologis, based in San Francisco — with proposals to add three large data centers that could use 249 megawatts of electricity.
A spokesperson for the mayor's office said an update on the city's response to large data center proposals could be expected next week.
How a City Council discussion of a moratorium could affect the situation is not clear.
Seattle City Councilmembers Eddie Lin and Debora Juarez and Council President Joy Hollingsworth said Thursday they plan to introduce legislation this month to bar new data centers for a year. With council approval, such a moratorium could later be extended by six months, according to their proposal.
“Thousands of Seattleites have made their voices heard — we should not be subsidizing the massive and record profits of tech corporations pursuing large AI data centers in our city,” Lin, the bill’s prime sponsor, said in a news release announcing the proposal.
A few weeks ago when the five proposals were on the table, City Light said serving that much additional load would make its job of providing power to existing residents more difficult. The 30 data centers that currently exist are relatively small. The utility said it was drafting new terms that large data center customers would have to agree to, likely including having to find their own power source outside of the city's supply.
The outcry was fierce.
Seattle elected officials received more than 54,000 messages raising "intense public alarm about the proposed data centers. Mayor Katie Wilson posted on her Facebook account that her team was working to identify a range of long-term policy approaches, including exploring a moratorium on siting new facilities.
Sabey said while it was aware of the discussions happening in Seattle, a combination of internal design constraints ultimately made its project impractical to pursue.
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