Senatoren nehmen große Technologieunternehmen ins Visier, da Rechenzentren die Stromtarife in die Höhe treiben

For months, anger has been building in the communities that are involuntarily footing the bill for the AI boom. As data center clusters pop up around the globe to feed AI’s massive and growing computational needs, nearby communities are seeing their utility bills skyrocket, even if they themselves don’t benefit from the sector at all. And now, in the United States, the backlash against data centers’ resource consumption – and its impact on consumers’ bottom line – has spilled out of the bounds of local politics and landed in the Senate. 

A consortium of U.S. senators – including Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) – is opening a probe into Big Tech practices that offload the cost of operating data centers onto the communities that host them. In open letters written to seven AI companies, the senators pushed for accountability and transparency, citing a study that found “electricity prices have increased by as much as 267 percent in the past five years” in “areas located near significant data center activity.”

While the probe is being led by Democrats, there has been a rare bipartisan groundswell over the issue in the states where data centers are concentrated. The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis reports that in Virginia, South Carolina and Georgia, “data centers are responsible for 65% to more than 85% of projected load growth” for utilities. 

Due to this intense demand growth, major utilities in these states, plus North Carolina, project that they will collectively add 32,600 MW of electrical load over the next 15 years. And it’s consumers – of energy, not necessarily of AI – who will have to pay the price for all of that additional demand. It’s estimated that Virginians can expect average electricity prices to increase by another 25 percent by 2030.

„We are witnessing a massive transfer of wealth from residential utility customers to large corporations—data centers and large utilities and their corporate parents, which profit from building additional energy infrastructure,“ Maryland People’s Counsel David Lapp told Business Insider earlier this year. „Utility regulation is failing to protect residential customers, contributing to an energy affordability crisis.”

Nothing will be done. The companies will donate a few thousand bucks their election campaigns and they will make it illegal for localities to pass laws inhibiting data centers.