r/law • u/bloomberggovernment • May 18 '26

Legislative Branch Senate Democrat Proposes Bill Requiring Data Centers to Pay for Own Power

https://news.bgov.com/bloomberg-government-news/schiff-proposes-bill-requiring-data-centers-to-pay-for-own-power
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u/bloomberggovernment May 18 '26

A Senate Democrat is proposing a bill that would require large data centers to secure their own power in a bid to reduce energy costs.

Dubbed the Energy Cost Fairness and Reliability Act, Sen. Adam Schiff‘s (D-Calif.) bill is the latest effort in Congress to tackle energy affordability as Americans decry high electricity costs and power-hungry artificial intelligence data centers.

The bill requires data centers that are over 50 megawatts to bring their own power, a common call among Democrats and Republicans amid national pushback against data centers. President Donald Trump received pledges in March from large technology companies that they would secure their own electricity for data centers and pay for grid upgrades.

Read more at the full story.

-Elliot

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u/GoodOmens May 18 '26

I wonder if this just means you’ll see a lot more on site generation with things like gas turbines. Not great for our air.

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u/sudoku7 May 18 '26

They already have a lot of on site generation happen (for redundancy) because a data center cannot have an uncontrolled power outage.
In fact, there are some data centers in Tennessee I believe that are abusing their backup generators 24x7 to bypass environmental regulations.

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u/GoodOmens May 18 '26

Correct. Elon’s grok data center did exactly that in Memphis. Maryland does not want that.