As electric bills rise, do data centers share blame
Amid rising electric bills, states are under pressure to insulate regular household and business ratepayers from the costs of feeding Big Tech's energy-hungry data centers.
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LampLighter
Joined 2013/04/13Visited 2025/08/09
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... It's not clear that any state has a solution and the actual effect of data centers on electricity bills is difficult to pin down. Some critics question whether states have the spine to take a hard line against tech behemoths like Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta. But more than a dozen states have begun taking steps as data centers drive a rapid build-out of power plants and transmission lines. ... More people are speaking out at the public utility commission in the past year than I've ever seen before," said Charlotte Shuff of the Oregon Citizens' Utility Board, a consumer advocacy group. "There's a massive outcry." Not the typical electric customer Some data centers could require more electricity than cities the size of Pittsburgh, Cleveland or New Orleans, and make huge factories look tiny by comparison. That's pushing policymakers to rethink a system that, historically, has spread transmission costs among classes of consumers that are proportional to electricity use. "A lot of this infrastructure, billions of dollars of it, is being built just for a few customers and a few facilities and these happen to be the wealthiest companies in the world," said Ari Peskoe, who directs the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard University. "I think some of the fundamental assumptions behind all this just kind of breaks down." ...
But more than a dozen states have begun taking steps as data centers drive a rapid build-out of power plants and transmission lines. ...
More people are speaking out at the public utility commission in the past year than I've ever seen before," said Charlotte Shuff of the Oregon Citizens' Utility Board, a consumer advocacy group. "There's a massive outcry."
Not the typical electric customer
Some data centers could require more electricity than cities the size of Pittsburgh, Cleveland or New Orleans, and make huge factories look tiny by comparison. That's pushing policymakers to rethink a system that, historically, has spread transmission costs among classes of consumers that are proportional to electricity use.
"A lot of this infrastructure, billions of dollars of it, is being built just for a few customers and a few facilities and these happen to be the wealthiest companies in the world," said Ari Peskoe, who directs the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard University. "I think some of the fundamental assumptions behind all this just kind of breaks down." ...
#1 | Posted by LampLighter at 2025-08-09 03:21 PM | Reply
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