By Rosemary Misdary, Gothamist

Demand for data centers is rapidly growing in New York, but Gov. Kathy Hochul says she wants tech companies to foot the bill for their mammoth energy costs.

Hochul said Thursday that the Public Service Commission will begin reviewing the costs of connecting energy-intensive industries, such as data centers, to the grid. The facilities have been blamed for spiking energy bills nationwide due to the significant power they consume for cloud storage, crypto mining, and AI.

Currently, there are more than 130 data centers statewide, with nearly half located in the New York City metropolitan area, according to Data Center Map, which tracks facilities nationwide. That number is likely to grow.

As of last month, there were 48 projects requesting connections to the grid, totaling more than 11 gigawatts — enough power for roughly 11 million households, according to state grid operators.

One of the data centers in the queue for additional power is Greenidge Generation, the crypto-mining facility that operates a fossil-fueled power plant in the Finger Lakes. The computer farm on the bank of Seneca Lake has requested an additional 200 megawatts, enough to power nearly 200,000 homes. The request is nearly double the plant’s current capacity and has faced pushback from locals in the picturesque region.

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