Compass Datacenters CEO Chris Crosby joined CNBC to discuss the growing number of local and state data center moratoria. His point: a pause stops projects but doesn’t define what responsible development looks like.
Crosby said communities are better served by setting clear expectations up front on water, power, workforce and long-term commitments. Every proposal should be measured against a standard the community sets itself. Rather than pausing, he encourages local officials to negotiate specifics: water use, grid contribution, workforce commitments and community assets a project can help fund.
He pointed to Compass’s own approach as an example of what a Class A Developer looks like: hybrid cooling that uses no water during operations, Class A Community-First campuses built on a 100-year neighbor philosophy and workforce investments like the $12.6 million facility donated to Texas State Technical College and the new MEI Data Center Pathway Program in Mississippi. His argument to regulators is that these should be baseline requirements, not differentiators.
