Bipartisan bill fails to protect US consumers from true datacenter costs, as rural power demand outpaces grid infrastructure.

The bipartisan Ratepayer Protection Act, designed to shield individuals from soaring electricity prices amid the datacenter boom, would fail to meaningfully protect the public from the centers' true costs, consumer advocates warn. The bill, backed by some in big tech such as Microsoft, moved through a House subcommittee in mid-June, with a full committee vote scheduled for July 1 that was delayed.

The legislative package includes benefits for big tech that would speed datacenter construction, prioritize the centers' connection to the electric grid, and open new loopholes allowing companies to claim they are paying for their own power, according to Jim Walsh, policy director with Food and Water Watch, which opposes the package. The bill's measures are largely voluntary, meaning state utility commissions can ignore the law altogether. Ultimately, the legislation largely addresses the needs of datacenters and utilities, but not ratepayers.

"They're taking care of utilities and taking care of datacenters and the bill is posing as a consumer protection measure when in reality it will increase costs on consumers across the board," Walsh said.

The stakes are substantial. Regions with higher numbers of datacenters have seen electricity costs spike by 267% over the past five years. About 200 new datacenters have sprung up over the last three years to house infrastructure for artificial intelligence, with dozens more proposed across the US. These centers can consume as much power as the largest US cities. The Federal Reserve found wholesale price increases of as much as 6% on average related to datacenters, and as high as 50% in some areas.

US Representative Kathy Castor, a co-sponsor of the bill, framed it as necessary protection: "My neighbors across Florida are grappling with skyrocketing electric bills. Ratepayers should not have to subsidize wealthy corporations' growing energy demands, especially from AI datacenters."

Yet critics argue the bill fundamentally misses the broader problem. Datacenters consume high volumes of water, cause pollution, strain local infrastructure, and impose other cumulative costs on communities. The Ratepayer Protection Act addresses only "a very narrow piece of utility costs," Walsh said, ignoring these wider impacts.

The bill also takes the wrong approach to consumer protection, energy policy specialists argue. Rather than treating datacenter expansion as inevitable, legislators should be pausing development to ensure consumers are protected, said Camden Weber of the Center for Biological Diversity. "Congress is treating datacenter buildout like it's inevitable, when lawmakers actually have the power to slow it down and prioritize protecting our communities, air, water and wallets," she said.

One provision would reduce National Environmental Policy Act evaluations that include reviews of local ecological and wildlife impacts for transmission lines and related infrastructure. By expediting reviews that typically add months to large projects, this change would accelerate—not slow—datacenter development. Connecting to the nation's energy grid can delay datacenter projects by as much as 12 years, so big tech is increasingly attempting to avoid the grid by building their own gas plants or clean energy infrastructure.

Yet these workarounds still rely on natural gas pipelines and massive fuel consumption, while dramatically increasing demand for energy infrastructure components—all of which drive up costs for individual consumers. "These bills make datacenter investments less risky for utilities, which only accelerates buildout at a time when communities across the country are calling for more scrutiny," Weber said.

The regulatory gaps are stark. Walsh pointed to Georgia, where regulators initially failed to charge a datacenter for 30 million gallons of water use. Most new datacenters use PFAS "forever chemicals" for cooling, which almost certainly pollute surrounding areas and present a greenhouse gas threat—yet no emission standards exist. "We don't have the regulatory regime to regulate datacenters, but we're fast-tracking the projects," Walsh said.

The bill's protective provisions are merely suggestions for state regulators to follow. Since utility commissions are already broadly accused of prioritizing datacenter needs over residential ratepayers, there is little reason to expect they would wield these voluntary measures to rein in costs.

Walsh said the bill's actual impact does not match its supporters' claims. "They're misleading the public and making it sound like they're doing more than they are," he said.