BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — While attending the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, Governor Ron DeSantis sat down with CNBC’s Brian Sullivan to discuss, among other things, the future of artificial intelligence (AI) data centers in Florida.
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First, what are AI data centers, these massive buildings filled with computers that have been popping up across the country, becoming the topic of many environmental and economical debates? According to IBM, these centers are facilities that “house the specific IT infrastructure needed to train, deploy, and deliver AI applications and services,” as well as “energy and cooling capabilities to handle AI workloads.”
Those data centers require an excessive amount of freshwater to operate, “up to 5 million gallons per day, equivalent to the water use of a town populated by 10,000 to 50,000 people,” so says the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI).
The American Geographical Society estimates that “globally, data centers consume around 560 billion liters of water annually,” and that “two-thirds of new data centers built or in development globally since 2022, are located in places already plagued by water stress.” And “of course,” the Society says, “data centers in hot regions require more cooling,” therefore require more water. The EESI specifically cites the “southwest United States” as a region wherein data centers consume more water to cool the building and equipment.
This, in Florida, has caused a “lot of concern,” said Governor DeSantis, “because we have a lot of environmentally sensitive areas.” This includes the Florida Everglades, the 1.5 million acres of biodiverse wetlands that have recently become the site of a massive restoration project spearheaded by DeSantis and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.
The project aims to both restore the national park and the state’s water resources, which the governor says “will have lasting benefits to our state for years to come.” The Everglades are just one of the many “environmentally sensitive areas in Florida,” which DeSantis says he hopes to protect, improve, and preserve.
Since 2019, the state has already made significant progress in restoring this biodiverse area and improving water management. The state reports that “water storage capacity has tripled,” and that “these efforts reduce harmful discharges into the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie estuaries and cut nutrient pollution in South Florida’s waterways,” efforts that could be halted or even reversed by AI data centers.
According to Nature Forward, “data centers can introduce several types of pollutants into water systems,” pollutants which fall into three major categories: biocides (“chemicals to prevent the growth of bacteria, mold, and algae in the cooling system”), corrosion inhibitors (“chemicals that prevent corrosion within cooling systems”), and heavy metals (“such as cooper, zinc, and lead, that can enter the water in trace amounts when metal components degrade”).
This is in addition to the “fine salt dust that drifts in the atmosphere from evaporative cooling towers, [which] can settle on nearby soils and surface waters, potentially harming vegetation and increasing salinity in aquatic systems.”
“Only 3% of Earth’s water is freshwater,” the EESI reports, “and only 0.5% of all water is accessible and safe for human consumption.” And for a state like Florida, which is already facing a water shortage thanks to a variety of factors such as, according to Grist.org, “an intensifying climate, overexploitation of groundwater, and a development boom,” any additional strain on its resources could be catastrophic.
Thankfully, water preservation is one of the key points outlined in DeSantis’s “Bill of Rights for Artificial Intelligence” proposal, released in December 2025. The proposal stated that the bill would not only seek to “protect Florida’s water resources, ensur[ing] that water resources are not utilized to the detriment of the public,” but also to “protect natural Florida, prevent[ing] the construction, siting, or operation of a data center ... on land classified as agricultural.”
Alongside the stipulations proposed to minimize a strain on Florida’s water resources were those involving energy, another point of concern surrounding AI data centers.
“We’re concerned about electricity rates being raised on customers because the data centers take up a lot,” DeSantis told CNBC.
In 2024, the Berkeley Lab Energy Analysis & Environmental Impacts Division released its United States Data Center Energy Usage Report, in which it found that, by 2018, “data centers consumed ... 1.9% of total annual U.S. electricity consumption.” Since then, that number has grown at an “increasing rate, reaching ... 4.4% of total U.S. electricity consumption” by 2023, a 131.58% total increase.
The amount of energy consumed by data centers in 2023 is, according to the Independent Alliance of the Electrical Industry (IAEI), “equivalent to powering 16 million homes for an entire year.” The IAEI also estimates that, by 2028, that percentage could increase from 6.7-12% of total U.S. electricity consumption, a data point agreed upon by both the U.S. Department of Energy and the aforementioned Berkeley report.
Why do AI data centers require that much energy? The American Action Forum states that “AI data centers demand higher storage capacity, faster internal networking, and more sophisticated systems” to manage its training and deployment tasks, thereby requiring higher energy consumption. Generative AI, the Forum says, “is estimated to consume between 10-30 times more energy than task-specific AI ... requir[ing] the amount of energy equivalent to fully charging a smartphone” to produce an AI image.
So, what does that mean for consumers? According to Consumer Reports, nothing good. “Massive data centers are gobbling up resources,” the nonprofit warns, “and you might be paying for it.”
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The U.S. Energy Information Administration reports that residential electricity prices jumped 7.1% from 2025 to 2026. In Florida, that increase was 5.54%. This isn’t entirely the fault of AI data centers, Consumer Reports states; “inflation and an aging power grid” account for part of that increase, but the “AI data center rush” is still “a significant [factor].”
“Costs are the number one thing facing everyday Americans, as well as Floridians,” said Governor DeSantis. “In the last two months across the country, [the price of] gas has gone up. So, we want to make sure we’re protecting the rate payers.”
DeSantis’s AI bill would do this by “prohibit[ing] utilities from charging Florida residents more to support hyperscale data center development, including electric, gas, and water utilities.” Essentially, in the governor’s words, “consumers and individual rate payers [will be] held harmless if there’s a data center.”
“So, if a data center is going to do a deal with [Florida Power & Light], FPNL cannot raise rates on customers,” DeSantis said.
Should DeSantis’s AI Bill of Rights pass, it would be one of the most comprehensive artificial intelligence-related legislatures in the country. It has, however, faced several setbacks, most recently when House Speaker Daniel Perez declined to bring the Bill to the floor during a special session, saying he preferred the idea of federal regulation. Still, DeSantis told CNBC that he will “probably” sign the Bill “this month.”
“I’m confident in the bill I’m signing,” the governor said. “Floridians are not going to be negatively impacted, and it may mean they don’t do data centers in Florida but, at the end of the day, I do not want to see a 20-to-30% increase on people because of the data center.”
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