House Bill 1523, filed last week in Puerto Rico’s House of Representatives and referred to the House Government Committee, proposes a legal framework to attract and develop artificial intelligence data centers on the island. The 47-page measure has three authors, all of the New Progressive Party (PNP): Jorge "Georgie" Navarro Suárez, Jiménez Torres and Nieves Rosario.
It would create the "Law for the Development of Puerto Rico’s Computing and Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure" and set government policy on establishing and expanding data and computing centers, as well as exporting their services. The bill acknowledges Puerto Rico’s energy problems and addresses them through requirements on interested companies, including provisions on electric service during reserve alerts, limits on relying on the local grid’s generation, and an obligation to have "own firm capacity" to cover their operating load.
The statement of motives says the industry, "instead of competing with families and businesses for scarce electricity, will contribute megawatts to the system." It also contemplates a Qualified Computing Center and a Megawatt Commitment, amendments to the Incentives Code tying benefits for high-consumption data centers to compliance, a program to expand and export existing data centers, a voluntary reserve program, a Sovereign Computing Bank, requirements for additional renewable energy, energy efficiency, water use and resilience, and designated Computing and Energy Zones.
Data centers have drawn criticism for environmental and community impact, including high water and energy use, according to studies such as one from the United Nations University.