OpenAI on Thursday, Nov. 5, published what it calls a National Community Compact, a list of promises to the communities around future data center campuses, sites with large buildings full of the computers that run AI, that it will own and operate itself. It repeats its promise to pay the full cost of the electricity those campuses use and the cost of the grid equipment needed to serve them. It says it will also publish each site's water and electricity use. And it says it will not ask public officials to sign non-disclosure agreements, contracts that bar the people who sign them from sharing what they learn. Alongside the compact, OpenAI published a policy blueprint asking lawmakers to make similar rules law for every company that builds such campuses.
Opposition to data centers grew over the summer in both parties, as people worried they could raise power bills and harm the environment, according to a news report. In Tuesday's elections, voters backed limits or rejected pro-development measures in all but one of 41 local ballot measures on data centers across 10 states, the same report says. OpenAI's announcement does not mention the vote. It calls the way these campuses are built "one of the first tests of whether the benefits of AI will be broadly shared."
Under the compact, each future campus OpenAI owns and operates gets its own local version of the compact, and OpenAI says it will report publicly each year on how it is doing. Before major spending begins, it says it will give financial guarantees so that other power customers are not left paying if a project is delayed, shrunk or canceled. It promises a water plan for each site, preferring closed-loop cooling, which reuses the same water instead of constantly drawing in fresh water, or other low-water cooling. It also promises independent noise studies, published before a campus opens and every year after. Its secrecy pledge keeps narrow exceptions for security information, trade secrets and commercially sensitive details.
Some of this is not new. In January OpenAI promised to pay its own way on energy at every one of its Stargate data center sites, including those built with partners. It later made site-by-site promises in Georgia and Ohio covering energy costs, water use, local investment and accountability, and calls this announcement the next step in that effort. It says it has signed the national Ratepayer Protection Pledge and committed to paying the full cost of its electricity and the added cost of the grid equipment its sites need. In July it voided the non-disclosure agreements it had used in Effingham County, Georgia, where it plans a campus.
The blueprint asks state utility regulators to make large power users cover the costs they add to the grid and to protect other customers if a project falls through. It asks lawmakers to bar developers from requiring public officials to sign non-disclosure agreements, with narrow exceptions, and to require public reports on water, energy, noise and hiring. When states or towns offer tax breaks, it says the terms should be public, with a way to take the benefits back if a developer falls short. OpenAI's chief global affairs officer, Chris Lehane, told reporters the blueprint had been in the works since August.
The promises are voluntary, and they cover only OpenAI and only sites it owns and operates. OpenAI itself calls voluntary commitments from companies "an important starting point." Several of the Stargate sites it listed in January, in Wisconsin, Michigan and Texas, are being developed with partners such as Oracle, Vantage Data Centers, Related Digital and SB Energy. Its January energy promise covered every Stargate site, and the compact points to community projects it backs with partners in Michigan and Wisconsin, but OpenAI has not said whether the new reporting and secrecy promises apply to those sites. The blueprint's rules would apply to other builders only if lawmakers adopt them.