In May, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, issued an executive order that called for “a higher bar” for data center development.<\/p>\n
The details: Cox’s order called for state agencies to adopt a framework for considering data centers that focuses on transparency, protecting ratepayers, managing water consumption, and mitigating environmental impacts. Separately, Cox called for reforms to a state agency that pushed what became a controversial data center project.<\/p>\n
Past views: Cox was a strong proponent of the Stratos Project, an initially proposed 40,000-acre hyperscale AI data center campus that is backed by “Shark Tank” investor Kevin O’Leary. Cox initially questioned those who criticized the proposal.<\/p>\n
“I’m so tired of our country taking years to get stuff done. It’s the dumbest thing ever. We think that taking time makes things better or safer, it absolutely does not,” Cox said during an April news conference. “You get a chance to give your feedback, and then decisions get made. That’s how we have to do stuff in this country and in this state.”<\/p>\n
The explanation: A spokesperson for Cox did not respond to Business Insider’s request for comment. In the wake of the news conference, Cox wrote on X that his statements “did not meet the expectations I have for myself. I seek to do better.” He also told reporters that public pressure helped spur his order.<\/p>\n
“Public pressure is important, and if I had had any concerns about water and the Great Salt Lake, I would have opposed it from the very beginning,” Cox said in June, per local news station KSL. “But the public has brought up some concerns that some of us didn’t think about that are important, and that matters.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In May, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, issued an executive order that called for “a higher bar”…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":165084,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,42,621,25,80493,1329,2386,1183,21079,80494,80495,11940,41129,8183,80491,80492,121],"class_list":["post-165083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-ai-data-centers","tag-america","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-boom","tag-business-insider","tag-datum-center","tag-florida","tag-gop","tag-gubernatorial-nominee","tag-massive-hyperscale-project","tag-november","tag-official","tag-other","tag-politician","tag-rep-byron-donalds","tag-state"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}