The list of folks who claim to care about protecting consumers from paying for costs caused by data centers is lengthy. Utilities. Data center companies. Politicians. Even the utility regulators with actual authority to set rates. What should we make of those claims, in the midst of this AI boom?
We should be unimpressed. Acting on this promise is overdue. Opportunities have risen, and they have deferred or demurred. The time has come to call their bluffs.
For starters, these claims to care are just that: words, not promises. No single politician or regulatory agency, neither federal nor state, has the authority to keep all the costs from data centers out of consumers’ electric bills. However, the utilities and the data centers could address this head-on through their actions and protect consumers. I assure you plenty of opportunities have sailed past without that happening. (It’s been nearly a year since I wrote about this “consensus” of concern, and little has been changed.) But now a case out of Maryland could finally shake the table.
Pledges on pollution
Before we get into the dark and murky world of how utility costs work their way into consumer rates and bills, it’s important to consider Big Tech’s push for dirty energy choices and the obstacles deliberately enacted by data center companies to block informed decision-making. These controversies are capturing public attention, though the near-zero transparency from data centers themselves feels ironic given their branding as “information technologies.”
Before these promises of consumer protection, companies set carbon goals. Amazon was a founder of the Climate Pledge, but now the headlines are “The Single Largest Pollution Source In The USA Going To Be An Amazon AI Data Center.” “Net zero” now seems to describe the amount of information, not the carbon, emitted by data centers’ energy plans.
In 2023, voluntary clean energy pledges were led by Meta, Google, Apple, Microsoft. But now we see Microsoft’s Chief Sustainability Officer explaining that “In 2020, Microsoft leaders referred to our [net-zero carbon] sustainability goals as a moonshot, and nearly five years later, we have had to acknowledge that the moon has gotten further away.”
Running from climate responsibility makes no sense, given the enormous costs from continued burning of fossil fuels, projections from UCS on long-term cost savings from clean energy, strategies for adding renewables to power data centers, and the actual way Texas has handled rising demand from data centers with wind, solar plus storage.
Our fights in the state regulatory reviews focus on:
- Requiring data centers to disclose clean energy plans.
- Prioritizing data centers with the most robust clean energy plans.
- Keeping data centers accountable for their commitments.
Pledges on Costs
While the data center companies and utilities seem to abandon climate goals, they have rolled out a variety of promises under the cover of a “Ratepayer Protection Pledge.” UCS experts dig through regulatory filings, transmission plans, and the arguments written by utilities, data center companies, and power plant owners every day. What are we finding? There are undisclosed deals for data centers and there are half-measures for consumers. We need the regulatory agencies that referee the arguments about who actually pays to call these bluffs.
We have found, over and over, utilities and data companies arguing that the state regulators should not adjust who pays the costs brought by data center connections and increased need for power plants. For example, Microsoft argued in Illinois they should not be required to sign binding commitments to pay for the costs they cause. This was after utility ComEd expressed concern about the huge demands from data centers.
So, ComEd proposed requiring a security deposit from new data centers to ensure they get paid. Since the utility is always going to be paid, this helps recoup the costs caused by data centers that would be passed other ratepayers if the data center business fails. However, this didn’t change the practice of spreading to all customers the costs caused by the new data centers. Thus this is a half-measure, only addressing the risk that new these customers like Microsoft actually pay their bills.
This safety-net for the utility is a repeating practice, with no actual cost-saving impact for ratepayers. ComEd’s parent company, Exelon, made related requests at the federal level. And yet, in those filings, nothing has changed to the existing practice of putting the transmission costs caused by new data centers into everyone else’s rates. In fact, Exelon says in its agreement with Amazon and other data centers that it will keep pursuing this spreading of costs.
My work digging through just the grid upgrades to connect data centers in eight states found $4.6 billion in 2024 and $3.1 billion in 2025 committed by utilities, in full knowledge these costs will be paid by all their customers. More transmission costs caused by the same data centers, described below, are being challenged by the Maryland Office of People’s Counsel, the state consumer advocate.
State regulatory efforts may exacerbate these harms
The “move fast, break things” culture of Silicon Valley isn’t the approach utilities—or their regulators—take. The unwillingness of regulators to push back and do more than the utilities’ proposals is extending the problem of costs falling on consumers rather than ending it.
Perhaps the most egregious utility response is Entergy building 10 new, full-size gas-burning power plants for the data center Meta is building in Louisiana. Entergy relies on overly optimistic assumptions to justify claims that the costs put on consumers will be eventually offset by benefits. When UCS and allies sought relevant information regarding the data center’s energy demand and permanent job creation in Entergy’s proposal, Entergy and Meta refused to answer and fought a subpoena.
UCS has also tried to get the Wisconsin Public Service Commission to wrangle data center recklessness better. The rules there don’t require real planning to lower costs to supply data centers. The Wisconsin utility We Energies announced delays in the retirement of the Oak Creek coal plant units multiple times.
The Trump admin is undermining cost-saving measures
The Trump Administration has been seeking a lot of attention for its data center policies and promises. When it comes to keeping costs lower, some of these are only rhetorical, and some are harmful.
Three times (so far) this year, the White House has organized large, public events about consumer protections from data center costs. First, there was a statement of principles from the National Energy Dominance Council and 13 state governors in January 2026; the second, an original presidential proclamation of a Ratepayer Protection Pledge in March 2026; and then in July 2026 a new release of “Rate Payer Protection Pledge” with more signatures by company leaders.
And yet, over the same period, the administration has made it harder to meet these goals by blocking renewable energy projects, reversing offshore wind leases, and cancelling clean energy grants—all of which would contribute more energy supply and help keep costs to consumers stable.
How this falls on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
There is no mistaking that the federal government’s tools for utility consumer protection are found at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). In a dramatic rollout of supports for data centers, FERC explained: “To fulfill its responsibility, the Commission must act to address the risk of cost shifting among transmission customers for the service to…[data centers].”
Note that FERC has not taken any of the opportunities previously available to them to stop utilities from raising customers’ rates to pay the costs caused by data centers. FERC agreed to utilities’ requests that there be protections for the utilities, like the one described above for ComEd that requires a data center pays the bills that the utility sends them. That is, for all their bluster about transparency and cost shifting, billions of costs will still go into the rates, and ratepayers will still have rate increases.
So, after letting the opportunity pass, FERC is changing their tune. They have taken up the battle flag, calling for this exact reform in a series of “Show Cause” orders directed at utilities in the regional power grids from the Great Plains to the Northeast, plus California. However, without explanation, FERC omitted any mention or attention to protecting consumers in the Southeast and most of the West. Also, I see no guidance in the “Show Cause Orders” for what levels of protections FERC expects utilities to enact, and no discussions about upending the old practices.
In fact, every indication so far from the federal government is that consumer protection is not happening. Fortunately, we have an opportunity to call the bluff. The Maryland Office of People’s Counsel filed a complaint at FERC, calling for them to separate the costs from Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania data centers that have been falling on Maryland’s and other states’ consumers.
The case Maryland brings
The Maryland Office of People’s Counsel is the consumer protection agency in Maryland and is active in utility rate-setting cases. This case stems from the costs caused by utilities in neighboring states that committed to data centers in 2022, 2024, and 2025. These utilities’ actions caused commitments totaling “more than $22 billion in transmission capital expenditures for baseline projects, overwhelmingly driven by projected data center load growth.” Their filing also cites UCS reporting on additional transmission costs from data centers from 2024 and 2025 that added $7.7 billion more onto customer bills from another utility process.
This is a pivotal opportunity to assign the costs back to the sources that caused them: data centers. The existing rules would spread the costs across the region make sense where the growth in demand is more evenly spread. That is the assumption that has supported the existing rules, and that assumption needs to be examined.
This is the same as what FERC said June 18 in the “Show Cause Orders:” “In particular, we are concerned about: (1) transparency regarding the assignment of Network Upgrades, and their associated costs; and 2) [data center] customers are ultimately responsible for costs incurred to provide transmission service, including the cost of Network Upgrades.”
This is such a rare case and a real chance for change: the murky, hard to find details are actually known, and the needed reforms align perfectly with the goals the government has announced.
This should be such an easy decision for the regulatory body to put the costs on the parties that cause them. If FERC took this step, then the state regulators could put these costs on the data centers—and then data centers would actually have to pay for what they need. In fact, state regulators don’t need to wait- each rate case is a fresh opportunity to sort and assign costs previously lumped together. Even quicker, the utilities and data companies could adhere to their pledges, and stop the cost-shifting before it starts.