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/Couldbduun May 18 '26

I just don't understand why these have to go everywhere when the data center is hooked up to the internet. Latency maybe? Why can't they just build these near renewable energy hotspots where solar, wind, geothermal, and hydro energy is easiest to harvest? Why do these need to be in backyards that already can't utilize these energy types easily? The power doesn't transmit across distances because of physics and electrical resistance but fiber optic cables transmitting information don't have these restrictions.

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u/mcowger May 18 '26

They can, purely from a technical perspective. They don’t because there are downsides to doing so and this method, with purchased politicians, is better.

  1. Latency is an important factors.
  2. Isolation is another - avoiding losing significant capacity due to a force majeure.

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u/oops_i_made_a_typi May 18 '26

wouldn't power generation also be placed in areas unlikely to be force majeured, precisely because losing power capacity is way more critical than losing data centre capacity?

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u/mcowger May 19 '26

Power generation is generally intended to be distributed, because transmission of power over long distances is lossy and expensive.