The House Science, Space and Technology Committee approved legislation Thursday that would standardize how the federal government studies data centers and their energy and water use.
The committee passed H.R. 9372, the Data Infrastructure Energy Measurement and Standards Act, 34-1. Rep. Daniel Webster (R-Fla.) was the lone no vote.
The bill, led by Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.), would direct the Department of Energy and the National Institute of Standards and Technology to draw up standards and best practices for reporting the energy and water use of artificial intelligence data centers.
“Our constituents are being asked to host these massive data centers without knowing exactly how much energy and water they use,” Subramanyam said. “We can’t really manage what we can’t measure precisely.”
