Americans' electricity bills are 30% higher than they were five years ago thanks to data centers
America's data centers could drain as much as 12% of the nation's electricity in the next three years.
Charles A Fazio/Bloomberg via Getty
Electricity bills are about to get higher for Americans. That is, unless big tech companies foot the bill for their enormous data centers.
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Owned by the likes of Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Meta, these data centers drained more than 4% of the nation’s electricity in 2023, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. The government agency predicts that number will double or triple to as much as 12% of the country’s electricity by 2028.
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Much of this rapid increase is thanks to the rise of AI, which uses up far more energy than browsing a website or streaming movies, the New York Times reported.
On average, Americans are paying 30% more for electricity compared to 2020, the publication reported. Electricity bills are on track to rise an average of 8% nationwide by 2030, according to an analysis by Carnegie Mellon University and North Carolina State University. In states with the most data centers, like Virginia, bills could increase as much as 25%.
Many states are already seeing huge price hikes, the NYT reported. In June, the electricity bill for a typical household in Ohio increased at least $15 a month because of data centers, according to local utility data reviewed by the publication. In Texas, electricity demand could double by 2035, local news station KHOU 11 reported.
Tech companies say they don’t expect residents and small businesses to eat the cost of their data centers. “We don’t want to see other customers bearing the cost of us trying to grow,” Microsoft energy procurement lead Bobby Hollis told the NYT.
Yet, the same companies have lobbied lawmakers, pitched their own pricing schemes, and invested in power companies to supply their own data centers or sell it wholesale, the NYT reported.
Subsidiaries of major tech companies such as Amazon and Google have sold more than $2.7 billion on the wholesale electricity market in the past decade, according to Federal Energy Regulatory Commission data gathered by the NYT. Amazon, which holds the lion’s share, saw its emissions climb 6% last year driven in part by data center construction, Bloomberg reported.