Brisbane, California
July 16, 2026
Brisbane City Council, Planning Issues Subcommittee Meeting on Data Centers City of Brisbane
50 Park Place
Brisbane, CA 94005
Re: Public Comment on the City's Approach to Data Centers as a Land Use - Making Opportunity, If We Choose to Host One
Dear Members of the Subcommittee,
My name is Anthony Walker. I am a Brisbane resident, and I also serve as Chair of the city's Open Space and Ecology Committee - though I want to be clear that I write here in my individual capacity as a member of the public, not on behalf of OSEC.
I understand the Subcommittee has taken up the question of data centers in response to a good deal of community concern, and I want to begin by saying that concern is understandable. The conversation locally has moved quickly, and much of it has carried a fairly skeptical tone. I'd like to offer a different starting point - not to argue that Brisbane should welcome a data center uncritically, but to suggest that the more useful question is not whether a data center is good or bad in the abstract, but on what terms we would be willing to host one. Done carelessly, this kind of development can impose real costs on a community. Done thoughtfully, it could be turned to Brisbane's lasting benefit. The difference lies almost entirely in the conditions we set, and the best time to think about those conditions is now - before anything is formally on the table - while our leverage and our options are both at their greatest.
It may also help to keep some perspective on what a data center actually is. Much of the current alarm is really alarm about Al, and the two have become fused in the public conversation - but they are not the same thing. Data centers are the physical substrate of the entire internet. Every email, every video call, every search, every bank transaction, and yes, every post in a community discussion about data centers, is handled by one. There is a certain irony in that: nearly all of us depend on these facilities constantly, often while raising concerns about them, and I include myself in that. I don't say this to wave away anyone's worries - they are legitimate, and a data center is a real piece of industrial infrastructure that deserves scrutiny. I say it only because it helps to begin from an accurate picture: not "should this alien thing exist," but "this thing we all already rely on may be built nearby, so how do we make sure it's built well. " And it is worth being honest that the underlying demand here is real and rising. Nationally, electricity demand is projected to grow by 128 gigawatts over the next five years - a 16 percent jump over today's peak demand, after two decades of the load being essentially flat - and data centers already planned or under construction account for as much as 93 gigawatts of that growth by 2029. If we want the internet services we already rely on to keep expanding and improving - and most of us do - then more data center capacity is, to a meaningful degree, the price of that. That does not mean any particular project isa sure thing, or that one proposed for Brisbane would necessarily succeed. It means only that the pressure is genuine, and that a flat refusal does not make it disappear it just sends it, and whatever benefit might have come with it, somewhere else.
I should say plainly that nothing about this is firm. As far as I am aware there is no announced or pending data center proposal in Brisbane - only recent commercial real-estate activity that has prompted speculation locally, and the understandable questions that follow from it. I raise all of this in that spirit: not as a response to any specific project, but as a set of ideas worth having in hand should one arrive.
First, the cleanest part of the picture: our electricity A great deal of the unease around data centers, here and nationally, comes down to a worry about emissions - the sense that these are enormous, dirty energy consumers, and that hosting one would undercut Brisbane's climate commitments. I want to address that first, because on this point Brisbane is unusually well positioned, and I think the concern is more solvable than it appears.
A data center is, at bottom, power electronics. It runs entirely on electricity - there is nothing inherent in its operation that requires burning fossil fuels on site. So the relevant question becomes: how clean is the electricity it would draw? In our case, remarkably clean. PG&E's annual Power Content Label shows delivered power that has been overwhelmingly free of greenhouse gas emissions for years now - 100% GHG-emissions-free in 2019 and again in 2023, and in the high nineties in the most recent years, at 98% for 2024. On top of that, San Mateo County is served by Peninsula Clean Energy, our community choice aggregator, which procures renewable power forcountywide demand and has been an effective partner across a range of local efforts. Between the two, the proposition that grid electricity here is clean is about as well established as it can be for any grid in the country.
That matters because it changes the shape of the problem. The emissions risk from a data center in Brisbane does not come from the grid it would draw on. It comes from one specific scenario worth guarding against: a developer in a hurry to get capacity online deciding to bring its own on-site fossil generation - gas turbines - rather than wait for or rely on the clean grid. That has already happened elsewhere: in Texas, where the wait for new grid capacity can run into years, several developers have opted to build their own on-site gas plants rather than wait. It is also, I think, the single most avoidable harm on this list.
Which leads to the one idea in this letter I would hold a little more firmly than the rest: if Brisbane hosts a data center, it should require a "bring your own clean power" standard - any on-site generation or backup must be met through on-site solar and battery storage, not gas turbines or diesel. This is a defensive, low-controversy condition. It does not ask the developer to do anything exotic; closed-loop and battery-backed facilities are well within current practice. And it resolves several worries at once - emissions, the noise that residents have raised (which, for a modern data center, is largely a function of cooling and any on-site generation rather than the computing itself), and a meaningful share of the strain such a facility would otherwise place on the local grid. This is not a hypothetical ask; it is already how the most serious hyperscaler deals are being structured. In Minnesota, Google's recent agreement with Xcel Energy1 has the company funding 1, 900 megawatts of new wind, solar, and long-duration storage - including a single 300 MW/30 GWh iron-air battery, one of the largest ever announced - specifically to serve its own new data center load, and covering the cost of any new grid infrastructure the project requires. Under the agreement, Googte pays all costs for its new service so that existing ratepayers aren't left subsidizing the growth. That is precisely the "bring your own power, and pay your own way" principle this letter is asking Brisbane to require, already playing out at utility scale and awaiting regulatory approval.
Water deserves a brief mention in the same vein. Cooling can be water-intensive, but closed-loop cooling systems are increasingly standard and largely address the concern. It is a reasonable thing to ask of a project, not a reason to rule the category out.
From limiting harm to capturing benefit
If the harms are manageable, the more interesting question is what Brisbane could gain. A large data center represents a significant new demand on the grid and a well-capitalized developer with a strong incentive to build quickly. Both of those facts are sources of leverage, and there is a growing body of thinking about how a community can put them to use.
The national organization Rewiring America has published two recent reports Homegrown Energy: Parts l&213on exactly this question. The core idea is straightforward and, to my mind, genuinely clever:
rather than meeting a data center's enormous new demand by building expensive new generation and transmission - the cost of which is ultimately borne by ordinary ratepayers - the developer can instead fund distributed energy upgrades in local homes (efficient heat pumps, rooftop solar, battery storage, etc.) Those upgrades reduce the homes' own draw on the grid, which frees up existing capacity for the data center to use. The data center gets the capacity it needs, faster and at lower cost; households get lower bills and cleaner, more resilient homes; and the community avoids a round of costly infrastructure expansion. Rewiring America has put real numbers behind this: converting inefficient electric heating and cooling to heat pumps could, nationally, meet roughly a third of hyperscalers' total projected capacity needs, and pairing rooftop solar with home batteries could unlock more capacity nationwide than data centers are expected to need through 2029, combined. The economics hold up too - with hyperscalers covering half the upfront cost, the capacity from a residential heat pump upgrade comes in at around $344 per kilowatt-year, in the same range as building and running a new gas plant (about $315/kW-year), except it can be delivered in months rather than lXcel Energy, Xcel Energy to Power New Google Data Center in Minnesota (February 24, 2026) htt s: investors.xcelener .com news-events news-releases news-details 2026 Xcel-Ener -to-Power-New-Goo le-DataCenter-in-Minnesota default.as x 2Rewiring America, Homegrown Energy: Part I (September 2025) htt s: www. rewirin america. or research home rown-ener -re ort-ai-data-center-demand, 3Rewiring America, Homegrown Energy: Part II, A policy blueprint for energy affordability (May 2026) htt s: www. rewirin america. or research home rown-ener -re ort- olic -affordable-household-u rades Page
years, and it lowers the participating household's own bill from day one. They call it, simply, "data centers pay."
I want to be careful not to oversell the arithmetic. Brisbane is a small city - on the order of 2, 500 households - and a single large data center can represent a load that even fully electrifying every home here would not, by itself, offset. So I do not want to suggest that a home-upgrade program is a one-forone substitute for the facility's demand. The "bring your own clean power" requirement is what addresses the data center's own load; a household program is a complementary benefit, not a magic wand. But as a way of turning a large developer's investment into something residents can see on their own utility bills, the model is worth Brisbane's serious attention.
I should be honest about where this particular piece of the idea stands today. The concrete deals moving right now - like the Google-Xcel agreement described above - are mostly the utility-scale flavor: hyperscalers funding grid-scale generation and storage to cover their own load, not upgrades inside people's homes. The household-investment idea is newer, and for now it lives mostly in modeling and proposed legislation rather than signed deals - Rewiring America's own analysis, and bills like the one New York is currently considering, which I'll come back to below. That is not a reason to set it aside; it is a reason for Brisbane to get its own thinking in order now, so that if and when a workable version of this model exists to plug into, we are ready to ask for it rather than negotiating from scratch.
First, make sure we get to have this conversation at all Everything I've described so far assumes Brisbane will have a genuine opportunity to weigh in on a data center - to set conditions, negotiate benefits, and hear from the public - before it is approved. That assumption is worth examining, because in several communities it has not held, and the reason is almost always the same: a classification gap.
Most zoning codes were written before the current wave of data centers and do not address them explicitly. When a proposal arrives, it gets sorted into whatever existing category seems closest - very often "office. " That single administrative choice can quietly determine how much scrutiny a project receives, and whether the public ever has a meaningful say.
Our neighbors in Hayward offer a cautionary example worth the Subcommittee's attention. 4 A 300,000- square-foot, 100-foot-tall data center was processed as an office use under the city's code, which allowed it to move through the standard planning process with input from no one but city staff. It came before the Planning Commission at all only because the developer happened to request additional building height - and at that point the Commission, rather than the City Council, became the body left to negotiate a public benefits package, with several commissioners openly questioning whether they should be negotiating public benefits at all. By the time the full implications reached the City Council - including the recognition that the single facility would draw electricity on the order of a fifth of all the homes in the city - the key approvals had already been granted. Hayward has since changed course 4Naomi Powell, Who Approved Hayward's Largest Data Center? Hayward Herald (June 16, 2026) htt s: ha wardherald.or who-a roved-ha wards-lar est-data-center and now requires full Council review for all data center projects, but only after the fact. It is worth noting, too, that the benefits the city did secure were assembled almost incidentally; at one point a water main replacement was offered as a community benefit, notwithstanding the facility s own substantial water demands.
The lesson I take from this is not that Hayward's officials acted in bad faith - by alt accounts they did not - but that a project of real consequence advanced largely out of public view because the process never required otherwise. Brisbane can avoid that simply by deciding, now, that data centers are their own distinct land use: one whose scale, energy and water demands, and permanence warrant full discretionary review, environmental analysis, and public hearings before the City Council, rather than approval by default under a category written for a different kind of building. Other places have reached the same conclusion; Loudoun County, Virginia - the largest concentration of data centers in the country - eventually revised its rules to require public hearings and board-level approval for these projects specifically. Establishing that expectation before any application is filed is the surest way to keep the decision, and the community's voice in it, where they belong.
How a community benefit might be structured
If the Subcommittee finds the basic idea worth pursuing, there are several ways the benefit could be structured. I offer these as possibilities rather than recommendations - the right choice depends on questions the City will want to work through deliberately - but it may help to see the range.
One path is the direct version of the model above: condition local approvals on the developer funding a distributed-energy program for local homes, delivered through a partner equipped to administer it. New York's legislature is considering exactly this - a bill called the Homegrown Energy Act5 would require data center developers statewide to fund residential heat pump, solar, and battery upgrades, administered through a state program and targeted to the households that would benefit most. The appeal is that the benefit shows up directly in residents' homes and on their bills.
A second path, which I find especially worth considering, is a locally governed climate fund - modeled on the same logic as Brisbane's public art requirement, where development contributes a defined share toward a public purpose. The basic mechanism already has precedent elsewhere: Minnesota now requires large data centers to pay annual fees of two to five million dollars into a fund supporting lowincome efficiency upgrades, and Illinois has a similar bill on the table with fees running two to twelve million dollars. Brisbane's version needn't be tied to efficiency upgrades the way those are - the fund concept is what matters, not the specific use those states chose. Rather than tying the contribution to one predetermined use, the developer could contribute to a dedicated local fund, and Brisbane would decide later, through its own deliberate process, where that money does the most good. The advantages are real: the City retains governance and discretion over the funds; the decision about how 5The Homegrown Energy Act, New York State Assembly Bill A9297A htt s: www.n senate, ov Ie islation bills 2025 A9297 amendment A
to spend is decoupled from the moment of approval, when we have the most leverage but the least information; and - importantly - the money is not locked to energy projects.
That last point matters more than it might seem. The Rewiring America model is, naturally, focused on homes and the grid, because that is its domain. But Brisbane's own largest source of emissions is transportation, not buildings. A fund that can be aimed wherever it will have the greatest local impact - EV incentives, zero-emission transit, active-transportation infrastructure - is considerably more valuable to this city than an equivalent sum that can only be spent on heat pumps. A climate fund is what lets us take energy-sector money and put it toward our actual biggest fish. It is also, I'd note, closely related to the local mitigation-fund concept OSEC has raised in other contexts, and to the work now underway on the City's Climate Action Plan update - which is, I think, the natural long-term home for an idea like this. A data center contribution would be one obvious near-term way to seed such a fund, but the fund's value does not depend on any one project ever materializing.
A third consideration, which cuts across both paths, is scale. As I noted, Brisbane alone is small. A benefit program of real consequence may need a larger base than a single city of our size can provide.
That is not a reason to set the idea aside - it is a reason to consider doing it in concert with others.
Peninsula Clean Energy already operates at countywide scale, already procures our power, and already runs resident-facing energy programs; an effort organized at that level, with a partner like PCE, could reach a size that makes the whole proposition work in a way Brisbane could not on its own. There is reason to think that scale would pay off in more than just numbers: in Rewiring America's state-by-state analysis, pairing a data-center-funding requirement with just one complementary policy - reduced permitting costs, say, or utility-backed financing - routinely pushed the share of households able to afford upgrades from the single digits into the 70s or higher, well beyond what either policy achieved on its own. A countywide partner is exactly the kind of actor positioned to stack those complementary pieces in a way a single small city cannot. I raise this only as one possible path worth exploring, not as a settled recommendation - but it seems to me the kind of partnership that could turn a modest local idea into something genuinely impactful.
A note on speculation
There is one risk I think deserves honest acknowledgment, because it Cuts against my own argument.
We are in the middle of something that looks a great deal like a land rush. A great many data center projects are being announced on the strength of very optimistic demand forecasts, and it seems likely that some meaningful share of them will never be fully built - that somewhere along the line the realization arrives that the projected capacity was not needed after all. Brisbane should not want to be left holding a half-finished project, or to have traded away something real for a benefit that never fully arrives.
The encouraging thing is that the same structures that capture the community benefit also protect against this. If any benefit is tied to the project as it is actually built - or, better still, captured into a fund as the development proceeds - then Brisbane secures its upside at the point of greatest leverage and is not exposed if the project stalls. Structured well, the speculation risk argues/or this kind of approach, not against it.
This, to me, is the whole case in miniature. We cannot make these projects certain, and we should not pretend the risks away. But if data centers are going to be built - and the demand suggests some of them will be - then the sensible posture for a city is neither reflexive welcome nor reflexive refusal. It is to safeguard ourselves against the downside as carefully as we can, and, for as long as this is happening, to extract as much genuine public value from it as we reasonably can. That is not opportunism; it is stewardship. It is what it looks like to take care of Brisbane.
In closing
I want to end roughly where I began. I am not writing to argue that Brisbane should rush to embrace a data center, nor to dismiss the genuine concerns residents have raised. I am suggesting that the choice in front of us is more interesting than a simple yes or no - that a use many people instinctively want to refuse could, with the right conditions, be turned into a real and lasting benefit for this community. Our electricity is clean, which removes the objection people most often lead with. A "bring your own clean power" requirement would handle most of what remains. And the demand a data center brings is, viewed differently, a source of leverage we could put to work lowering residents' costs and funding the climate progress this city has already said it wants.
None of this is settled, and none of it needs to be today. These are ideas, offered early, in the hope that they widen the conversation beyond whether to say no. If the Subcommittee is going to recommend a posture toward data centers as a land use, I would simply encourage it to keep the door open to the constructive version of this - to frame the question as one of terms and conditions rather than permission, and to preserve the City's ability to capture the benefit if the opportunity comes. Do it carelessly and it could cost us. Do it right and it could be a genuine asset. I'd like us to be ready to do it right.
Thank you for your time and your careful consideration.
Respectfully,
Anthony Walker
Brisbane Resident
Ibarra, An el
From:
Sent:
Subject:
Padilla, Ingrid
Monday, July 20, 2026 1:04 PM
Written Correspondence: NO DATA CENTER
Mayor and Council,
See correspondence below from DaleWilhelm.
Best,
INGRID PADILLA | She/Her
City Clerk
* Direct: (415) 508-21 13| Cell: (628) 21 9-2922[ Email: ipadillaObrisbaneca. org City Hall Public Walk-in Hours: M-Th: 8:30 AM - 4:30 PM, F: 8:30 AM -12:30 PM ^38k in . :,
From: dale wilhelm <dalewilhelm@gmail. com>
Sent: Monday, July 20, 2026 12:54 PM
To: Padilla, Ingrid <cityclerk@brisbaneca. org>
Subject: NO DATA CENTER
Unless I am completely mistaken, NO ONE IN BRISBANE WANTS A DATA CENTER.
Pass an ordinance completely prohibiting a data center of any size or shape or any other quality.
Humbly, Dale Wilhelm
L
1 Dear City Council Planning Issues Subcommittee,
Please advance a data center moratorium in Brisbane until such a time as Brisbane has San Jose's and Santa Clara's existing data center impacts from water use, electricity use, diesel 2. 5 pm generation and noise generation.
The staff report provides data on the fiscal benefits of data centers in these other jurisdictions, without data on the water, electrical, air and noise impacts, or the limits these other jurisdictions are considering or have set on such impacts.
Not having a data set of costs will result in an incongruous discussion of data centers. Make data central to your consideration of data centers.
Michael Bames
Brisbane Resident
Ibarra, An el
From:
Sent:
To:
Cc:
Subject:
Jennifer Fernandez <drjenniferfernandez@gmail. com>
Tuesday, July 21, 2026 9:26 AM
Ibarra, Angel
Council Members
Public Comment for 7/21 Planning Subcommittee
Good afternoon, Members of the Planning Issues Subcommittee. My name is Jennifer Fernandez and I live in Visitacion Valley, San Francisco, roughly half a mile from the Brisbane tine and directly across from San Bruno Mountain.
I want to begin by acknowledging Brisbane's position. The quarry has operated since 1895, the City has real budget needs, and a proposal that permanently closes the quarry and conserves 82 acres has genuine appeal, lam not here to ask you to walk away from revenue.
I am here to ask you to make sure this site never becomes a data center.
The current proposal is described as advanced manufacturing, but it is a nearly 900, 000-square-foot building with a 50-megawatt power commitment. That is data center infrastructure, whatever it is called today, and tenants change.
My concerns are three. Noise: data center cooling runs twenty-four hours a day and produces constant low-frequency sound that carries across open terrain and into the neighborhoods below. Wildlife: San Bruno Mountain is home to federally endangered species, including the Mission blue, callippe silverspot, and San Bruno elfin butterflies, which are sensitive to continuous light, heat, and habitat fragmentation.
Resources: data centers consume enormous amounts of electricity and water while producing very few jobs per acre.
So I respectfully ask the Subcommittee to do three things. First, require an enforceable condition of approval that permanently prohibits data center use on this site. Second, direct staff to ensure the forthcoming EIR analyzes a data center conversion scenario. Third, prioritize uses that deliver the revenue Brisbane needs without industrializing the mountain.
Thankyou for your time.
Jennifer Fernandez
(415)504-2393