San Francisco pauses new data centres in the hometown of AI

San Francisco’s board of supervisors unanimously passed a 45-day moratorium on new data centres, extendable to 22 months, halting a Bayview expansion and a 49.5 MW Dogpatch project. Europe paused first and for a different reason, the grid, and now finds it cannot build the capacity the Commission wants.

San Francisco has paused new data centres. The board of supervisors voted unanimously on Tuesday for a 45-day moratorium, effective at once, in the city that houses OpenAI and Anthropic. It can be extended to 22 months.

Supervisor Shamann Walton of District 10 wrote the measure, co-sponsored by Connie Chan, Jackie Fielder and Cheyenne Chen, Mission Local reported. Planning officials will study energy, water, air quality, land use and community impact. A hearing on the findings is due by November.

“We need to know what these impacts are,” Walton said. “Until we know what that is, it needs to stop.”

Two projects stop with it.

NOVVA’s site at 400 Paul Avenue in Bayview draws 9 MW and had applied to reach 36 MW. In Dogpatch, a 49.5 MW waterfront building was in permit talks with Mayor Daniel Lurie’s policy staff in August, the San Francisco Standard reported. The sponsors called Bayview-Hunters Point already overburdened by air pollution.

The city cannot say how many it has. Bloomberg found no comprehensive tally, and the Standard counts six sites.

Europe reached this point first, and by a different route. South Dublin County Council refused Google a third data centre at Grange Castle in 2024, citing insufficient grid capacity rather than air quality.

The Irish numbers explain why. Data centres took 23% of the country’s metered electricity in 2025, up from 5% in 2015 and more than every urban household combined, the Central Statistics Office found.

Denmark went further. Its grid operator Energinet halted all new connection agreements this year, facing a queue of roughly 60 GW against national peak demand of 7 GW.

Then the problem inverted.

Europe’s constraint is now that it cannot build fast enough. Nscale’s £2B Essex site, with Microsoft as anchor tenant, cannot get 90 MW in time for its 2027 opening, and some British grid waits run close to a decade.

San Francisco is pausing what Europe is struggling to get built.

The Commission wants European data centre capacity tripled within seven years, which needs roughly EUR 200B of private money. San Francisco has six sites, and no list of them.