Data centers face a sweeping new power regime
Summary
Lawmakers have introduced a new bipartisan bill that would make data centers pay more for the energy infrastructure they use while also speeding up the building of power plants and transmission lines to support their growth. The bill aims to balance faster energy development with protecting other customers from bearing the costs caused by data centers.Key Facts
- The new legislation targets large data centers that use a lot of electricity, especially due to the AI boom.
- Data centers would pay their share of the existing and new costs for electricity transmission, changing a long-standing federal policy.
- New data centers consuming at least 20 megawatts must cover all incremental costs for power generation, storage, transmission, and distribution caused by their operations.
- Regulators can charge data centers even more than their incremental costs and use extra funds to lower bills for other customers.
- Data centers must still pay infrastructure costs even if they stop buying electricity before those costs are recovered.
- States can impose stricter rules, including limiting electricity use or requiring new power supplies for data centers.
- The bill also requires utilities to get financial guarantees before building power infrastructure for data centers to protect other customers.
- Major tech companies like Microsoft, Google, Nvidia, Meta, and Amazon have not publicly commented on the bill yet.
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