Catch up quick: The push to temporarily block large-scale data centers comes after four companies recently approached Seattle City Light proposing five new facilities in the city.

• Such data centers would require up to 369 megawatts of electricity per day — about one-third of the city's current average power usage.
• Two of the companies have since withdrawn their proposals, but city officials are still looking at a year-long ban.

State of play: Microsoft, Amazon and other tech giants have spent years building data centers in places like Quincy, Washington, and Umatilla, Oregon, to support cloud computing and, increasingly, AI.

• But Seattle has largely avoided hosting the kinds of sprawling, power-intensive server farms more commonly built in rural communities.
• About 30 small data centers exist in Seattle, according to city estimates, but none approach the scale of the ones recently proposed.

What they're saying: "I don't see us having a permanent ban on all data centers," City Councilmember Eddie Lin, who is sponsoring the proposed moratorium, said during a meeting last week. "But I do think we need to have appropriate rules and regulations."

• Those rules could deal with data centers' water and electricity use, as well as any noise, greenhouse-gas emissions or job impacts they might generate.
• The city would work on developing the rules while the temporary ban was in place.

• "This is not a knee-jerk reaction," City Council President Joy Hollingsworth said during last week's meeting, citing the effects of "mega data centers" on other cities around the country.

The other side: Joe Nguyen, president and CEO of the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, told Axios he's concerned the city is pursuing data center policies that are "more symbolic than they are functional."

• He argued restricting data centers could be viewed as "another attack on the technology industry" without meaningfully reducing energy demand, since data center projects could simply move elsewhere.
• "It's not like they're going to go away," he said, noting Seattle is increasingly reliant on AI, cloud computing and other online services powered by data centers.

What's next: Lin is expected to formally propose the one-year moratorium in the coming days.

• Meanwhile, Mayor Katie Wilson's administration says Seattle City Light is developing new policies for large-load data centers aimed at preventing infrastructure and energy costs from being passed on to residents.