Key Highlights
- The trio sent letters to the heads of Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta as well as the data center operators CoreWeave, Digital Realty and Equinix asking for greater transparency, cost-sharing and accountability. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut wrote that they were alarmed by reports that these data centers caused residential electricity bills to “skyrocket”.
- Regions with significant data center activity have already endured price increases by as much as 267% over the past five years, the three lawmakers wrote.
- According to the Energy Information Administration, a federal agency, the average cost of a US family’s electricity bill had risen 7% year-over-year as of September.“Through these utility price increases, American families bankroll the electricity costs of trillion-dollar tech companies,” they stated, demanding that data centers and tech companies “pay their fair share of their electricity rates” and “a greater share of the costs upfront for future energy usage”. Lawmakers asked companies for more information about their current and projected number of data centers, and their energy usage, as well as what actions have been taken to prevent electricity costs from being passed on to consumer energy bills.
- They also inquired about the tax deductions or other financial incentives these companies received from state and local governments, as well as payments they made to lobbyists and consultants to advocate for the construction of data centers.
- They requested a response no later than 12 January 2026. The rapid expansion of AI – and the fact that a single data center can “use enough electricity to power hundreds of thousands of homes”, according to the senators – means that utility companies have spent billions of dollars building new transmission lines and power plants.
