The House overwhelmingly approved legislation Wednesday aimed at protecting American households and small businesses from paying infrastructure costs generated by the rapid expansion of large data centers.
The Ratepayer Protection Act passed 417-3, giving the first major House legislation addressing the electricity costs associated with the data-center boom broad bipartisan support.
H.R. 9340 would establish federal standards for state regulators to consider when determining how utilities recover the costs created by new large-load customers consuming 100 megawatts of electricity or more.
The measure is intended to prevent expenses for new generation, transmission lines and other grid upgrades required by large data centers from being shifted onto existing customers.
Republican Rep. Gabe Evans of Colorado introduced the legislation alongside Democratic Rep. Kathy Castor of Florida.
“Large load data centers must cover the full costs of any system updates they require, not families or small businesses,” Evans said during the push for passage.
Evans said the United States should continue building infrastructure needed for artificial intelligence while ensuring that families, farmers and small businesses are not required to subsidize that growth.
Castor similarly argued that major technology companies developing large AI facilities should pay for the electricity and grid upgrades their projects require.
The legislation would encourage special rate structures or other agreements designed to recover the full incremental infrastructure cost from large-load customers.
It would also encourage regulators to require financial assurances designed to protect ordinary customers if a data center later scales back operations or leaves a utility system entirely.
The legislation preserves considerable authority for individual states rather than imposing one specific nationwide utility-rate structure.
States without data-center-specific standards would be required to begin proceedings and consider the federal framework, but regulators would retain authority over how those principles are implemented locally.
That distinction has generated some criticism from lawmakers who argue the legislation does not go far enough because its regulatory framework remains largely state-directed.
Supporters counter that state flexibility is necessary because electricity markets, utility structures and energy needs vary substantially across the country.
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie said responsible data-center development can produce long-term infrastructure investment while arguing that the companies creating additional demand should bear the resulting costs.
“The Ratepayer Protection Act helps to safeguard these benefits by ensuring that the companies who are building data centers — and not American families and small businesses — are paying for the electricity they use,” Guthrie said.
The bill had already demonstrated unusually strong bipartisan support before reaching the House floor.
The Energy and Commerce Committee approved it unanimously in July by a 52-0 vote.
The legislation arrives as utilities around the country prepare for rapidly increasing electricity demand associated with artificial intelligence, cloud computing and other data-intensive industries.
Large data centers can require enormous amounts of electricity, making the question of who pays for new generation and transmission infrastructure increasingly significant for state regulators and consumers.
The issue has also become politically prominent ahead of the November midterms as lawmakers from both parties face constituent concerns about electricity prices and large data-center developments.
Republicans have generally sought to pair protections for existing ratepayers with continued expansion of U.S. artificial-intelligence infrastructure, while some Democrats have called for stronger requirements on technology companies.
The 417-3 House vote demonstrated significantly broader agreement on the basic principle that ordinary utility customers should not automatically inherit infrastructure costs created by exceptionally large new energy users.
The measure now moves to the Senate, where Ohio Republican Sen. Jon Husted is leading companion legislation.
Any Senate action would have to occur during a compressed legislative calendar as lawmakers approach the November elections., Politico reported.
For now, the House has delivered an unusually bipartisan response to one of the emerging economic questions surrounding the AI boom: who should pay when massive new data centers require billions of dollars in additional power infrastructure.
This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
