Can a bill on Capitol Hill tackle data center concerns in San Diego?
By the San Diego Union Tribune
Rep. Scott Peters, D-San Diego, is stumping for an energy transmission and permitting bill on Capitol Hill that supporters want to take up in the upcoming lame-duck session of Congress — and Peters says part of the expansive legislation can address the controversy surrounding a potential data center on the Naval Base Point Loma Old Town Campus.
“This is the only bill that really pushes back on data centers,” Peters said of the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026, nicknamed BAAJA.
Debate over the federal bill comes as the Manchester Financial Group has confirmed it is exploring whether to build a data center among a range of options the local company is considering to develop about 60 acres on the site that the Naval Information Warfare Systems Command (NAVWAR) calls home.
The prospect of a data center has drawn opposition from city politicians, environmentalists and others whose concerns include that the facility may add more strain on the electric grid and lead to even higher monthly power bills.
Because NAVWAR is on federally controlled land, the city of San Diego does not have jurisdiction over what gets developed on the property adjacent to Pacific Highway.
But Peters said the sweeping 417-page legislation, if passed, would “cover the whole country, including this project” in San Diego by addressing two issues.
“One is, you (data center developers) gotta pay all the costs of your electricity, and two is you gotta pay for the hookups,” Peters said. “The infrastructure can be very expensive. That’s what keeps this project from adding to our residential electric bills. Without this bill, there would be no such restriction, and the city wouldn’t be able to stop it. So that’s why this bill is so important.”
The result of years of negotiations in both chambers of Congress, BAAJA aims to reform and streamline the permitting process for critical energy infrastructure projects.
Despite a polarized political landscape, BAAJA is a bipartisan bill that’s received buy-in from Democrats keen on freeing up the grid to deliver more clean-energy projects across state lines and Republicans who predict it will accelerate infrastructure projects by reforming federal environmental and permitting laws.
The U.S. Senate plans to hold a procedural vote on the bill after the Nov. 3 midterm elections, shortly after lawmakers return to Washington from recess. If BAAJA passes the Senate, it moves on to the House of Representatives.
Backers of the bill in both parties say they have received assurances that President Donald Trump would sign the legislation if it reaches his desk.
San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria has signed an executive order to direct city staff to advance a temporary moratorium on all new data-center development within the city limits.
The proposal, which is on the City Council docket on Monday, includes establishing a working group of up to 15 stakeholders to develop recommendations for water and electricity demand and potential impacts on utility bills, housing and neighborhoods.
Peters says BAAJA can help on that front as well.
“This will help (Gloria) and the city a lot because it’s going to deal with that cost issue,” Peters said. “It’s going to say, ‘No, you can’t build a data center unless you pay for all the electricity, all the infrastructure to hook it up and keep all those costs off of ratepayers’ bills.’”
During his time in the House of Representatives, Peters has worked on a slew of energy and transmission bills, and BAAJA includes components of legislation he has introduced.
He said the bill poised for a Senate vote can help tackle the huge increase in electricity demand that is expected across the country — not just from data centers that help drive the burgeoning artificial intelligence boom, but also clean-energy projects that promote electrification over natural gas and other fossil fuels, reshoring manufacturing and increased demand from air conditioning.
“If we don’t keep up and build more energy, all that energy that we pay for is going to cost more,” Peters said at a news conference Thursday at the headquarters of Cleantech San Diego, a trade group that promotes green-energy projects. “This bill will help by speeding things up (and) keep those costs down because we hear that a big project, if it gets delayed for a year, that’s a 10% increase in price that’s passed on to consumers at a time when we can’t afford it.”
The bill has generated support from organizations on opposite sides of the political spectrum, ranging from the American Petroleum Institute to the Citizens’ Climate Lobby and ACORE, a trade group representing the solar and wind industry.
But the bill has also drawn some opposition.
Conservation groups that include the Center for Biological Diversity and Friends of the Earth say BAAJA “includes sweeping attacks on the Endangered Species Act that would gut protections for nearly every endangered species across the country.”
Earlier this week, the Natural Resources Defense Council said that while it “is encouraged by the transmission provisions, other elements of the bill are deeply flawed” and the environmental group “will be seeking improvements” to the bill in the coming weeks.
With polls indicating that Democrats may take control of the House and even the Senate after the midterms, Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, has argued the party should hold out and negotiate a deal that is more favorable to their interests when a new Congress gets sworn in.
Peters disagrees.
“Everyone knows this has to get 60 votes in the Senate,” he said. “There’s no world in which we’re going to have 60 people on one side or the other — 60 Democrats or 60 Republicans. So you’re going to have to have bipartisan support” to get a bill through. “There’s no reason to think we’ll get a better deal.”
The four primary Senate sponsors of BAAJA are Sens. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va.; Mike Lee, R-Utah; Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., and Martin Heinrich, D-N.M.