The Electric Bill is Too Damn High, and Both Sides Agree: It’s the Local Data Center’s Fault

The data center industry is exploding, and server farms are popping up all over the world. As you might’ve guessed, much of the industry’s boom is built around the blossoming generative AI industry, which requires massive amounts of electricity to do stuff like make a picture of Mickey Mouse committing the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

What is also exploding as a result of the tech industry’s ever more exponential energy needs are electricity bills—for everyone. Consumers are noticing (and unhappy about it), and now, so are the politicians tasked with representing them.

In some cases, the cost of electricity has increased so significantly that it has presented an easy political platform on which candidates can base their campaigns. Indeed, a recent article from the New York Times shows how the direness of recent utility bills is fueling a gubernatorial race in New England:

This generally obscure topic has become critical in New Jersey because electricity rates this summer climbed 22 percent from a year earlier — faster than all but one state: Maine. As the governor’s race has tightened and affordability has become a key issue, power costs have become a predominant theme in ads paid for in part by groups associated with both national parties.

One Bloomberg analysis from September found that electricity “now costs as much as 267% more for a single month than it did five years ago in areas located near significant data center activity.†But it’s not just the people who are unfortunate enough to live close to a data center who are feeling the impact. In August, the New York Times reported that “the average electricity rate for residents has risen more than 30 percent since 2020.†Those numbers are expected to continue to explode over the next five years, with one study from Carnegie Mellon University and North Carolina State University estimating that people in the U.S. living near data centers will see another 25 percent increase.

The rising costs associated with the data center industry seem to be an ever-more common theme in political races. Semafor quotes several politicians who have recently expressed interest in deterring the data center industry. “I think we should, personally, block all future data centers,†said Patrick Harders, a Republican running for an open county board seat in Virginia.

“We need to ensure that data centers aren’t built where they don’t belong,†said Geary Higgins, another Republican, in a recent campaign ad. Semafor notes that Higgins’ competitor recently did their own ad in which they also dissed data centers, asking: “Do you want more of these in your backyard?â€

Conservatives have a long history of talking tough when it comes to the tech industry and then doing very little. Democrats, meanwhile, have spent years defending Silicon Valley, despite growing concern from their constituents. However, now that the likes of Elon Musk and Marc Andreessen have thrown their weight behind President Trump, the spell seems to be breaking somewhat.

Whether politicians earnestly plan to do anything about the threat to your electricity bill is up for debate. What does seem clear is that the specter of the price hikes has offered an easy way for legislators to virtue signal to their constituents that they’re on their side.

“Electricity is the new eggs,†the New York Times quotes David Springe, executive director of the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates, as saying. Damn if that isn’t a ringing indictment of the new Trump economy. Electricity is the New Eggs could be a winning campaign slogan for the Democrats, if they were smart.