On Tuesday, the City of Oakley will host a work session to receive information and public input on the feasibility of allowing data centers within the City of Oakley. This will be a joint session of the City Council and Planning Commission.
Currently, the city is operating under an “emergency ordinance” which has a moratorium on data centers through Oakley to April 14, 2027 – in April, they took the first step with an “urgency ordinance”.
The city council made the move for a moratorium on data centers after the controversy of the Bridgehead Industrial Project – a 164-acre site with 10 buildings ranging from 117,180 sf to 936,680 sf. Although data center use was originally proposed in the project, the applicant removed it during the hearing.
For Tuesday, since it is a work session, there will be no action taken, only direction given by the council, including directing staff to move forward with a potential ban.
Some of the issues around data centers include, but are not limited to, their demand on natural resources or public services, such as electricity, water, and wastewater treatment, as well as environmental impacts created by data centers, such as air pollution, noise and light pollution, and habitat loss.
The staff report also highlights a study brought forward during the Pittsburg City Council Meeting which referenced findings in a University of Michigan study1 (“UMich Study”) dated July 2025, and titled, “What Happens When Data Centers Come to Town?”, data centers can have the following impacts related to increased natural resource usage:
- Increased Utility Rates: Data centers increase local electric utility rates by driving up overall energy demand, which can strain grid capacity and force utilities to invest in costly infrastructure upgrades. These costs are passed on to residents through higher rates. Data centers have also secured long-term power agreements, which reduce the available supply and push prices up for other consumers.
- High Resource Consumption: A single data center can consume up to 2 megawatt hours (“MWh”) of power—equivalent to the power used by 2,000 homes—and millions of gallons of water annually for cooling.
- Resource Efficiency Trade-Off: While advanced cooling methods can offer energy efficiency improvements, current technologies force a trade-off between energy and water efficiency, limiting sustainable solutions
One of the main questions to be asked is “If permitted in Oakley…where?”
According to the city, there is no consensus on established data center setbacks from residential uses. Some jurisdictions have adopted setbacks of varying distances ranging between 200 and 500 feet. Other sources lean toward a minimum 500-foot buffer between a data center and residential uses. There are even recommendations suggesting a one-half mile buffer between the two uses, such as from the AINow Data Center Policy Toolkit, which provides jurisdictions of all types and sizes tool to stop, slow, and restrict rampant data center development in their areas if that is their intent
The city attorney says even still, should the City implement an outright ban, it should do so only after finding that the environmental, land use, and other circumstances support such a ban and that no properties within the City would be precluded from developing other reasonable industrial or commercial uses.
The staff report cited several state bills related to data centers are in the works which include:
- SB 886 (McNerney/Padilla): This bill, the California Technology Innovation and Ratepayer Protection Act, would require the Public Utilities Commission, on or before July 1, 2027, to establish separate tariffs for the interconnection of the participating customer facilities and the provision of transmission, distribution, and optional generation services to participating customers, as specified.
- SB 887 (Padilla): The bill would require the State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission to develop uniform statewide standards for those conditions for data centers, require regular compliance reporting by operators of data centers for those conditions, and initiate enforcement proceedings in the event of noncompliance with those conditions, as appropriate. The bill would require the quantification and mitigation of impacts for emissions of greenhouse gases of a data center project in the same manner as those certain environmental leadership projects. By increasing the duties of a lead agency, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program
- SB 1168 (McNerney): Existing law vests the Public Utilities Commission with regulatory authority over public utilities. Existing law authorizes the commission to fix the rates and charges for every public utility and requires that those rates and charges be just and reasonable. This bill would require the commission to assess opportunities for rate structures to ensure data centers pay a reasonable share of their costs associated with transmission and distribution needs, ensure that data centers pay for their proportionate share of load increases and procurements needed to reliably serve their loads while maintaining consistency with the applicable integrated resource planning requirements, and alleviate cost pressures on residential ratepayers.
- AB 2619 (Papan): This bill would require a person who owns or operates a data center, prior to applying to a city or a county for an initial business license, equivalent instrument, or permit, to provide its water supplier, under penalty of perjury, a good faith estimate of the expected water use, the anticipated source of water, and the data centers projected water use volume for the maximum day, maximum month, and average year. Similar reporting requirements would be required upon each business license renewal. This bill would also require the Department of Water Resources and the State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission to develop, on or before January 1, 2029, guidelines and best practices to maximize the efficient use of natural resources to address the developing and emerging needs of technology in California that are consistent with urban water use objectives under prescribed provisions of law.
- AB 222 (Bauer-Kahan): This bill would require the State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission (Energy Commission) to establish a process for the owner of a data center, as defined, to submit the power usage effectiveness ratio, as defined, for the data center to the Energy Commission on a biannual basis, and require the owner of a data center to submit this information for the data center in the manner and timeframe specified by the Energy Commission. The bill would require the Energy Commission, as part of the 2027 edition of the integrated energy policy report, to include an assessment of electrical load trends for data centers, as provided.
According to the city, if passed, many of the bills would not take effect for up to several years meaning there could still be several years without state-level regulation to protect rate payers and the use of natural resources, or without technology and methods that could assist data centers to operate in a more efficient manner than currently available today.
If You Go
- Joint Oakley City Council & Planning Commission Meeting
- Tuesday, July 21, 2026
- 6:30 PM
- 3231 Main Street, Oakley, California 94561
- Agenda: Click Here
Previous
- May 16, 2026 – Oakley Agrees to Extend Moratorium on Data Centers For 1-Year
- April 15, 2026 – Oakley Agrees to Urgency Ordinance for Moratorium on Data Centers
- April 14, 2026 – Oakley to Discuss Temporary Moratorium on Data Centers
- March 23, 2026 – Oakley Looks to Finalize Bridgehead Industrial Project, Council to Talk 5% Pay Raises
- March 11, 2026 – With Data Centers Removed, Oakley Approves Bridgehead Industrial Project
- Jan. 21, 2026 – Split Vote: Oakley Planning Commission Makes Recommendation on Bridgehead Industrial Project
- Dec 13, 2023 – Oakley Receives 3.2 Million Square Feet Bridgehead Industrial Project Application
