Transcription
They're not paying their fair share. The numbers don't lie.
We saw customers with bills $900 over $1,000. When I've noticed my electric bill gone up, started asking my neighbors, "Is your bill still going up?" And they had no idea that this was happening.
If you live in any of these states, your electric bill is higher this summer. It's not because of anything you did. You're paying more because the world's biggest tech companies are building so many data centers. Big tech's quest for artificial intelligence is creating a tidal wave of new costs that are about to hit all of us, even if you live nowhere near a data center. If policymakers fail to change anything, by one estimate, electricity rates for average households will spike by as much as 70%.
The big problem is that we're all subsidizing the wealthiest corporations in the world in their pursuit of artificial intelligence.
Cassandra Lionz lives in northern New Jersey. In July, she got an electric bill that caught her attention. The thing I noticed right away was compared to the same time last year, my bill has gone up, but also I noticed my usage went down.
I wanted to understand why Cassandra and her neighbors are suddenly paying so much more for electricity every month. Between 2021 and 2024, the number of data centers nationwide nearly doubled. Many factors determine what we pay for electricity. But to understand how data centers are making it more expensive, it's important to know that the price that utility companies pay for power is set in regional markets. The biggest of those is a market known as the PJM.
They had a big what's known as a capacity auction last year. Last year's capacity auction broke all records. The prices went up by 800%. David Lap represents rate payers in Maryland, another PJM state. He explained to me that when utilities have to pay a higher capacity price, they pass it on to consumers in the form of supply charges. According to the PJM's independent monitor, data centers were responsible for 63% of last year's price increase.
And it's not just PJM. We're seeing this happen across the country. To lure data centers to their service areas, utilities have started cutting direct deals with big tech, typically hidden from the public. The concern with these deals is that the data center may be underpaying and so our rates will go up in order to finance a sweetheart deal for a data center.
Big tech is literally the wealthiest, most profitable industry in the world. They have the capacity to pull out their pocketbooks and cover their costs associated with this data center expansion. Instead, the American people are covering their costs.
I think if the tech companies want to create this open market and have this business, I think they're the ones that need to pay for these infrastructures, you know, not myself.