A Senate Democrat on Sept. 17 blocked Republicans from moving to immediate passage on the Ratepayer Protection Act, a House-passed law that would encourage states to require data centers to pay for their own energy costs.
The bill previously passed the House in a 417-3 vote on Wednesday evening.
Though progressives in the lower chamber had expressed concerns about the bill’s lack of enforcement mechanisms, the faction ultimately backed the bill. It seemed on track for a painless passage of the Senate under unanimous consent, a procedure that allows uncontroversial bills to pass quickly.
The bill was introduced on the Senate floor Thursday by Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio), the bill’s sponsor in the upper chamber, who noted that as many as 1,000 new data center constructions are expected in the United States in the next five years.
“Americans are becoming ever more reliant on computing power from data centers for their daily lives, from medicine to manufacturing, education to agriculture, national defense, and the way we deliver basic services. Data centers are used not just for AI; they support almost every aspect of modern life, including online shopping, streaming video, social media, and the broadcast of this very debate.”
The law would require states to consider the adoption of models to require data centers to fund their own energy within a year, but would set no requirements that states ultimately adopt those models.
Husted moved for unanimous consent to pass the legislation and was blocked by Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), who said that the bill to address this topic should have more stringent federal enforcement mechanisms.
“It’s not enough for us to tell states to consider making data centers pay for grid updates. Rather than voluntary pledges or suggestions to states, Congress needs to pass real legislation with real teeth,” Heinrich said.
Heinrich noted that for many Americans, utility rates had already increased – and that such Americans wouldn’t gain relief from the state opt-in process of the Ratepayer Protection Act.
Instead, he proposed consideration of his bill, the Grid Savings Act, “to require – not a voluntary agreement – to require large-load customers like data centers to pay for the facilities needed to connect them to the grid. Not to consider it, not to make pledges – to actually do it, to pay for the upgrades they need.”
Data centers are top of mind for many American voters this year.
The data centers used to power artificial intelligence (AI) services such as ChatGPT, Claude.ai, Grok, and others – aside from their extensive land requirements – require massive amounts of energy.
Estimates indicate that currently, data centers use about 4 percent of the U.S. electric grid, according to online energy shopping and consultation platform Electric Choice.
The energy used to power these facilities, which draw roughly 176 terawatt-hours of electricity per year, could otherwise be used to power 16 million homes, according to Electric Choice.
The Energy Department and other analysts have estimated that that share could skyrocket to 12 percent of the national power grid in the coming years.
Despite promises by many data centers to provide their own power, residents in areas where such centers have been built have reported spikes in their energy bills.
Anxiety over the possibility of such utility price jumps has driven many voters to be skeptical or outright hostile to the construction of such facilities in their area.
Likewise, cooling the computers that execute AI queries requires significant amounts of water, raising fears that energy might not be the only utility cost affected by the data centers.
Other residents living near data centers have also reported that the facilities are noisy. According to these residents, the massive fan and cooling system used to keep the servers from overheating is loud enough to travel through walls and disturb sleep.
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