House lawmakers expressed support Wednesday for protecting energy ratepayers from price hikes driven by surging data center demand, but remain far from a legislative solution.
A congressional hearing focused specifically on legislation to address large data center energy use came as the issue gains national political relevance and after President Donald Trump called on Congress to act.
Top Republican lawmakers have gone from expressing skepticism about the need for them to legislate on data centers to exploring options, but what exactly remains to be seen.
“We all want to make sure that locals don’t bear the burden of the energy needs of data centers,” said House Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.). “It’s a problem I think everyone on this committee agrees on.”
Rep. Diana Harshbarger (R-Tenn.) put the issue leaders are dealing with back home bluntly. “There’s a lot of resistance in rural areas to building those data centers. Local mayors and commissioners, they just don’t want them. We need to educate them on why they need them.”
Guthrie said he was committed to finding legislative “common ground” with Democrats. Energy Subcommittee ranking member Kathy Castor (D-Fla.) suggested the issue could break through typical partisan gridlock.
“It matters too much to the folks we represent back home that are just being crushed by higher bills,” Castor said. “So I’m actually hopeful that we can plow some ground on this.”
Still, lawmakers have significant work ahead before agreeing on specific policies — both to allocate data center-related costs and to address broader grid challenges pushing electricity prices higher.
Democrats expressed interest in a draft Republican proposal, the “Ratepayer Protection Act,” but raised concerns about its scope and structure. The measure would amend the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 to require large electricity users, such as data centers, to cover the full cost of the infrastructure needed to serve them.
The bill would establish a federal standard requiring those customers to pay 100 percent of the costs for new generation and transmission upgrades, with payments or financial assurances provided upfront.
Rep. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.) argued the bill sets too high a threshold for who qualifies as a “large-load customer,” calling the proposed 100-megawatt benchmark “extreme” and suggesting it be lowered to 50 MW — still “more than enough demand to power a small city.”
Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.) also criticized the bill’s exemptions for states that have already taken action on data center rate structures, saying they are “so broad that they basically wipe out any requirement that state commissions would do anything.”
In the Senate, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has a bill with Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) to force data centers to find independent power sources, but it and other proposals have yet to get a hearing.
Guthrie said he would like the “Ratepayer Protection Act” to eventually reach the House floor, though such action remains distant. The draft has not yet been formally introduced and lacks a lead sponsor to champion it.
House lawmakers appeared to find broader agreement around Rep. Troy Balderson’s (R-Ohio) “Load Forecasting Enhancement Act,” which would require the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to study electricity demand forecasting.
The rapid growth of data centers has complicated utilities’ ability to predict future demand, a key component of grid planning, due to their large and often variable energy use.
Still, some Democrats signaled frustration with proposals focused primarily on study rather than action, arguing Congress must also confront deeper structural issues driving electricity costs.
“I think some of these bills, a lot of these bills, are fine,” Peters said. “I don’t think we’re getting to really the hard questions yet,” later pointing to interregional transmission as an unresolved challenge. It’s part of broader permitting reform talks on Capitol Hill.
Efforts to address transmission have long stalled because of divisions between Democrats and Republicans — and within the GOP. Conservatives have expressed concern about giving the federal government too much power over the location of power lines.
“Electric markets around the country vary widely, as does the transmission planning for them,” said Rep. Rick Allen (R-Ga.). “A one-size-fits-all approach to public planning requirements on the power sector disregards those differences and could create real challenges to the reliable delivery of affordable power.”
