Senators near permitting deal as data center power demands threaten household electricity bills

A bipartisan group of senators is closing in on a permitting reform deal for energy infrastructure, driven in large part by the uncomfortable reality that America’s data center boom is threatening to make everyone’s electricity bill a lot more expensive. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee leaders have expressed optimism about reaching an agreement before the chamber’s planned recess on October 2, giving negotiators a tight window to finalize a package that could reshape how the US builds and pays for energy infrastructure. The data center problem nobody budgeted for Data center-related capacity costs in the PJM grid region, which covers 13 states and Washington DC, surpassed $21 billion in recent auctions. Without intervention, household electricity bills in affected areas could climb by an estimated $70 per month by 2028. If no policy measures are enacted to address how these costs are allocated, the total capacity costs driven by data centers could exceed $163 billion by 2033. The culprits are hyperscale data centers, facilities with power demands exceeding 100 megawatts, that have proliferated to meet surging AI workloads. Virginia has become the epicenter of this bui...