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
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
40 Comments
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](https://news.bgov.com/bloomberg-government-news/schiff-proposes-bill-requiring-data-centers-to-pay-for-own-power?utm_source=reddit.com&utm_medium=bgov).
-Elliot
That would be a start. Then they should start billion dollar developmental programs for their host communities
Trump will probably want to pay them a few hundred billion of our money to use coal and not wind or solar.
Why is this so damn hard to do? It’s gonna be a back and forth for months on this. All the FrEe mArKetS booshit is gonna come into play.
They can take their mini-nuclear-reactors to Mars – run all their broken AI models there.
WIN-WIN!
They should also have to pay for their environmental footprint. These places are gonna cripple our environment like, multitudes worse than what we are already doing.
That said. Annoyingly the way our system works is that every win like this is short term. Even if Data Centers have to pay for their own power, give it like, 6 months and lobbyists will have that bill ripped up and silently undone once it’s out of sight and out of mind. These things only ever last for as long as public consciousness is concerned with it. The moment we move on they will jump to undo it- and thats even if we win at all. Its like, grooling work to fight for these bills, and easy as shit to undo them or create loopholes.
Imo, what we need most right now is to diminish corporate power in politics and fight for stronger labor power, or this type of shit will never get better.
These data center builders who claim “It’s to beat China” don’t seem to grasp that China can build them because they actually have/ build / improve the infrastructure to do so.
That’s a novel idea. Pay your own bills. I taught my kids that.
Go further. Require that all power be fully generated by renewable or low carbon sources.
Many end customers are companies with trillion dollar market values, and they could become players in the renewable sector.
and water…
Why limit it to “large” data centers? Make it all of them. Fuck this, we’re tired.
How about all data centers?
Why is there always a “but” with these criminals?
Why would they not?
We can’t have that, those precious data centers need every penny in profit they can get their greedy little hands on. Making them pay for their own power means their CEO won’t get a new yacht this year, he’ll have to wait til next year.
It would be nice but then you’ll end up with more situations like Lake Tahoe. DC Providers made deals with Utilities and then the Utility decides that they will drop Consumer clients en masse and provide to the DC instead.
You’ll end up with Microsoft and Google going to a Utility and buying all the output from a particular powerplant. Microsoft will then show that they have provided their own power for a project while consumers will be left with increased power costs because the Utility now has less power to go around and may decide to not build more plants.
Pause. Hold on. They’re not paying for their own power? I fucking pay for my own power. What makes these leeches so fucking special?
They will melt the ice caps no matter who pays for the power.
AI data centers need to be off the power grid, and forced to reclaim at least 97% of water used for cooling.
The data center thing should be evaluated based on the cost/benefits to the community. Electricity should be charged at marginal cost rate (local residents should not be paying for it), they should not be allowed to use their backup generators for electricity expect in emergencies (that is increase noise and decrease air quality), and they should not be using large amounts of water because this is just bad design.
This is the same problem that crypto has had on local communities, but way more massive.
Insane that that’s not just a given. If I have to pay for my power how TF are they just not
isn’t this common sense? Who would oppose this? The average American gets $0 from an AI data center’s existence
I use more electricity my bill goes up. Data centers use more electricity my bill goes up.
We live in an oligarchy. Wealthy business owners just push costs onto tax payers
It makes sense though. If you can spend $10bn on a data center you can add in another $1bn for energy production. Add in solar and wind.
Regular ratepayers shouldn’t be subsidizing the AI boom with higher electric bills. If tech companies want to build these energy-sucking data centers, they can foot the bill for the grid upgrades themselves and its crazy that this even needs to be a law.
About time
Note that some of them do that and they always choose the cheapest and fastest energy solution which ends up being dirty diesel generators.
Should be SUPPLY their own power. Would probably boost green energy.
All states and cities need to put a moratorium on data centers until all of this can be properly regulated. It is the Wild West out here and the developers are trying to push as much infrastructure as they can before they’re stopped.
If AI is on our power grid, they will probably get the low tier cheaper energy and the sucker tax payers will get the high tier expensive energy.
Nobrainer
I love these self made billionaires that need all these handouts to make their billions.
Power *and water* should be the bare minimum. Datacenters consume an absolutely gigantic amount of water for cooling.
AND WATER… why is this not mentioned? This bill is a half measure.
Unless they are sharing their profits with the community the community doesn’t need to be paying their bills. Like whoever passed this to begin with needs jail time wtf.
I’ve been so disappointed in how the Dems have dropped the ball on this issue. They’re never going to win a rural district, but they could have made substantial inroads in state wide races by capturing 5-10% of these voters on an anti data center platform.
Billionaires paying for their own thing? That’s crazy talk
Do another that forces them to filter their own water, too.
Wait wtf they don’t already pay for it?
I’m sorry, but why would they NOT be paying for their own power?
Don’t forget to make them responsible for the water consumption.
Which will be massive.
Why is Kevin O’Leary is building a data center in Utah?
Why are so many data centers setting up around the Great Lakes?