No new data center will break ground in Tennessee until the state has the office and the standards to weigh its harm and the community it lands in has a say, and we'll build that capacity first.
Data centers have already requested roughly 11,000 megawatts of power; that's five times the data center load served today. Right now, the facilities in that queue cannot be properly evaluated because Tennessee has no office to enforce environmental justice or to comprehensively evaluate and track how new and existing operations affect communities. Building that office could take up to two years, which is why we're calling for a 24 month moratorium until that office is stood up and standards are in place. The moratorium may end earlier, provided our work is done.
On day one we'll direct the state's environmental agency to design the Environmental Justice Division and the Tennessee EnviroScreen map so they're ready. The moratorium's design ensures that no data center, AI campus, or crypto mine at a megawatt or above will register or break ground until the office is staffed, the map is live, and the siting, water, noise, emergency, outage, renewable matching, and backup-power rules are in force. The pause will reach back to the day the bill was filed so companies cannot race to apply before a vote. If the EJ Division, the standards, or the grid rules are not in place at 24 months, review continues under whichever exists, our environmental agency fills in for whichever doesn't, and every registration is conditional until all three are in place.
Affected facilities already permitted or under construction will be required to meet the new standards within twelve months. Projects filed during the pause will pay their fees up front, so the queue can fund the standup of the EJ Division. Projects in a community the EnviroScreen map flags for pollution and health burden will have to leave that burden lower than they found it and sign a binding agreement the EJ Division enforces. Data centers can wait. The air, the water, and the quiet the rest of us enjoy cannot.
We'll create a Division of Environmental Justice inside the state's environmental agency with the power to deny any permit, stop any polluter running without one, and answer to the communities it protects, so no Tennessee neighborhood has to host an industry that poisons it.
xAI ran 35 gas turbines, more than 400 megawatts, in Memphis for a year without proper permits, calling them temporary. Shelby County's health department then issued the permits after the turbines had been running.
To prevent this from happening again, and to fight for clean air retroactively, we will build an Environmental Justice Division (EJD) within the Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC).
The EJD will create and publish the Tennessee EnviroScreen, a public map tracking cumulative burdens of pollution, disease, food insecurity, water quality, and more. In named communities with abnormally high burden, the division will analyze major sources in or beside communities, screen permits and deny any that would push a community beyond safe limits, and require net-benefit agreements between communities and new major sources within safe limits. Local programs will be allowed to set higher standards, but no program in a named community may issue a permit without EJD review and approval.
Permit fees will pay for community organizations to take part in permit proceedings and for neighborhood air monitors, and frontline groups will hold reserved seats on the board reviewing each local program. The EJD will also be tasked with reviewing and screening all computing facilities by size from one megawatt up and be empowered to order any source running in or beside a named community without a required permit to stop operating, regardless of the temporary or permanent status of their equipment.
Furthermore, we will make sure that Tennesseans are able to enforce our environmental laws in state court themselves, with attorney's fees when they win, to help ensure that a livable world remains available to us all.
We'll hold every data center in Tennessee to one state standard it cannot split, rename, or bargain its way around, where outages run on batteries and fossil engines may run only to keep people safe.
Nashville wrote Tennessee's first local data center rules in 2026, and a developer sued within weeks. Counties on their own could lose fights against billion-dollar operators, which is why we need statewide legislation.
We'll write one standard into state law for every data center, AI campus, and crypto mine at one megawatt and above, and let any city or county set stricter standards if they choose. These operations belong on heavy-industrial land, set back from homes, schools, and places of worship, and set back farther as power and floor area grow, up to two miles. Everything a company runs on a site or wires to it will count as one facility, including what it calls temporary or somebody else's property.
We'll require closed-loop cooling so facilities recycle water instead of draining the county's, and in a declared drought households and farms will get access to water first. Each facility will hold to 55 decibels by day and 45 at night, measured at the property line, and file a quarterly public report of its power, water, and emissions. Outages will run on batteries sized to meet full load for at least two hours, and when those batteries are spent the computing shuts down rather than drawing on the neighbors' power. Engines may run only for life safety, in a real, unplanned outage, and never as a result of a spike in energy costs.
We'll ban nondisclosure agreements between an operator and any unit of government in Tennessee and put every community benefit agreement in a public registry. Every facility will register with the state each year, pay the fee that funds its own oversight, and post a bond that pays to clear the site if it's abandoned. The state will refuse registration when a facility would push a community's pollution and health burdens above the lower of the state or county median.
Tennessee has the land and power these companies want so we get to set the terms and make sure no county has to win their fight on their own.
We'll make data centers strengthen our grid, match demand with renewables, and pay for their infrastructure and stranded assets so that their buildout never lands on your power bill.
In Tennessee communities with data centers, residential bills rose 3.2 percent from 2023 to 2024 while commercial bills fell. It could get worse: the Tennessee Valley Authority has fielded roughly 11,000 megawatts of data center requests, five times the data center load it serves today. If our grid cannot support a data center, it should not be built here, and none should run at full power beside a neighborhood that has gone dark.
We'll require every data center, AI cluster, and crypto mine at 1 megawatt or above to buy its power from the grid. Facilities will pay up front for their wires and post one security covering what the utility has yet to recover and the clean power they are still committed to buy, recalculated every year and released as those balances fall.
To stop the gas buildout driven by current demand, we'll require every facility to match 110 percent of its use with new clean generation on that same grid. One that falls short must pay a rising charge per megawatt-hour until it contracts the supply, and three short years in five will suspend its registration. A quarter of those charges and whatever security is left after payouts will fund home batteries and efficiency upgrades for households in host communities.
Facilities will install shutoff equipment before they run and keep battery storage sized to at least two hours of their load. In grid emergencies where a utility orders a load cut the facility may draw no grid power until the cut ends, and must operate on battery storage only with no engine start and no compensation.
The security is held by the Tennessee Renewable Power Authority, and the grants run through the Tennessee Green Bank. Neither exists yet, so until they do the State Treasurer will hold the security and the state's Office of Energy Programs will run the grants.
This way a company building here covers its own costs and depends on the same grid we do, so the houses next door keep their money safe and their lights on.
We'll require companies to mark synthetic images, videos, and sounds as machine-made, regulate the use of companions, ban biometric mass-surveillance without a judge's order, protect prices on essential goods and services, and create a permanent state commission to enforce the rules alongside the Attorney General.
While Tennessee's voice-cloning ban was the country's first, it stops at voice and likeness and could go much further to regulate AI. Right now hiring algorithms can screen out Tennessee applicants without any information or appeal to a person's judgment and chatbots can impersonate personal relationships to keep your attention without disclosure. Artificial Intelligence now touches our work and our personal life unchecked, and we need to rein it in.
We'll ban social scoring, subliminal manipulation, real-time mass biometric surveillance without a judge's order, and systems built to push a person toward self-harm. No AI will simulate romance, sex, or intimacy with a minor, and parental consent will be no defense. Any system that talks with you will say it is a machine, and applications with over a million monthly users will mark every synthetic image, video, or sound their systems make as machine-made.
When a machine makes or shapes a decision about your job, home, or medical care, a person must review it before you're denied, you'll have the right to know what data was used for the decision, and the right to appeal to a person who can overrule the decision and get an answer to your appeal within 30 days. Lastly, we'll make it illegal for a business to price essential goods and services like groceries, rents, or emergency services based on your data.
A permanent Tennessee AI Commission will write the rules, register every system that's affected, and demand records necessary for enforcement. We'll also make sure the Attorney General enforces every duty, and that persons harmed can sue.
