Some lawmakers want the state to get a piece of the billions of dollars proposed nationwide to develop large data centers to support artificial intelligence and cloud computing.
But they need to strike the right balance between wooing mostly construction-related jobs and managing the infrastructure costs and environmental effects.
Last year’s legislation fell short because the proposals focused mostly on attracting developers with tax breaks.
This year, legislation includes creation of guardrails to ensure the cost of electricity demands for large projects are not passed on to consumers and that developers submit water conservation and recycling plans to regulators.
But smaller projects should also be prohibited from passing on electricityrelated costs to residents and other commercial customers.
Rhode Island now hosts seven such data centers, none of which would meet the standard for covering power costs proposed in the legislation.
Allowing any new projects to sidestep regulations would take advantage of ratepayers already dealing with rising energy costs.