Ald. Maria Hadden (49) is pictured at a City Council meeting on April 7, 2025. [Don Vincent/The Daily Line]

The City Council Committee on Environmental Protection and Energy on Tuesday will consider an ordinance that would remove an exemption in city code that excludes data centers from the city’s program that intakes and reports on large buildings’ energy use. 

The environment committee will meet at 10 a.m. in council chambers.

The ordinance (SO2026-0027165) from Ald. Maria Hadden (49), chair of the environment committee, comes as the city aims to strengthen regulations around data centers. More than two weeks ago, Mayor Brandon Johnson signed an executive order that directs the heads of several city agencies to immediately develop and institute new regulations to address data center energy use, noise, air pollution and community impact.  

Related: Mayoral executive order sets up new rules for data centers as Johnson pushes for temporary moratorium 

The executive order also created a task force to study and recommend a holistic modern regulatory framework for data centers the city could use going forward. The mayor has also called on the City Council to pass a temporary pause on permits for new data centers and the material expansion of existing ones until the new regulations can be set up.  

Under the city’s benchmarking program, established in 2013 but now under the purview of the Department of Environment, buildings with a floor area greater than 50,000 square feet must report their energy use to the city annually, with some exceptions, and the city in turn analyses and publishes that data for the public to view.   

Data centers are one of the types of buildings currently exempt from the benchmarking program.  

Hadden’s ordinance would remove that exemption and subject data centers to benchmarking reporting requirements, mandating that they report their energy use annually alongside all over covered properties.  

The ordinance would also require data centers’ water usage to be reported and published. Water usage data is not currently a required component of buildings’ benchmarking reports, but they may submit it and the environment department is allowed to publish it.  

The committee on Tuesday will also hold a subject matter hearing on the impact of recent torrential rainstorms this summer and the resulting flash flooding they have caused in parts of the city.