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The House Found the One AI Bill It Can Pass Before the Election: Asking States to Think About Making Data Centers Pay Their Own Power Bill · Minds, Bodies, and Terawatts

• 0:00
  [Host] This is Minds, Bodies, and Terawatts, the show where Congress found the one AI bill it can pass, by taking the orders out. On Tuesday evening the House passed a bipartisan bill meant to stop data centers from pushing up your electric bill.
• 0:14
  [Guest] It is called the Ratepayer Protection Act, and it went through on the fast track reserved for bills nobody objects to, the kind both parties wave through without a fight.
• 0:24
  [Host] We covered this at the start of the month, when the President told towns fighting data centers they would end up backwards and poor, and his own Vice President said the objection was the electric bill. So the House picked the Vice President's side?
• 0:40
  [Guest] It did. Then you read the bill, and you find out how far that side goes.
• 0:45
  [Host] What does it actually do?
• 0:47
  [Guest] It says a data center drawing a hundred megawatts or more, enough for tens of thousands of homes, should pay the full cost of the new plants and wires built to serve it, instead of that cost being spread across everyone else's bill.
• 1:01
  [Host] That is the whole thing I want. Where is the catch?
• 1:05
  [Guest] The catch is the verb. The bill does not order any of that. It tells state utility regulators to consider it, finish a hearing on the idea within two years, and then adopt it or not.
• 1:17
  [Host] Consider. So Congress voted to ask every state to think about it.
• 1:22
  [Guest] Because that is all this bill can do. Under a law from 1978, your electricity rate is set by your state's utility commission, so the House can ask, and your commission decides.
• 1:33
  [Host] So who wrote a bill this polite?
• 1:35
  [Guest] A Republican from Colorado, Gabe Evans, and a Democrat from Florida, Kathy Castor, both in races rated a toss-up. Most of the cosponsors are Republicans, and a handful more in tight races signed on in the last two weeks.
• 1:48
  [Host] Republicans lining up behind a data center bill the day after their President called the backlash a conspiracy?
• 1:54
  [Guest] On Monday he posted that there is a sick conspiracy, capital letters, against AI and data centers, and the only one happy about it is China. On Tuesday his party passed a bill named after protecting ratepayers from data centers.
• 2:08
  [Host] Why now?
• 2:09
  [Guest] Because the House leaves Thursday for seven weeks and does not come back until after the election. A New York Times and Siena poll out Tuesday has sixty-one percent of likely voters against building AI data centers at all, and the President's own voters split down the middle.
• 2:25
  [Host] Say my state does adopt it. Does my bill go down?
• 2:29
  [Guest] It stops going up for that reason. The Labor Department's latest inflation report has electricity up four percent over the year through August, and a rate class that bills the data center for its own substation takes that driver off your bill.
• 2:43
  [Host] Then why does it feel like a small answer?
• 2:46
  [Guest] Because the buildout costs money before it earns any. Every new plant lands on somebody's bill the month it is built, and whatever cheap intelligence it produces shows up years later, in products nobody buys by the kilowatt. Fair allocation changes who pays through that stretch, not how long it lasts.
• 3:04
  [Host] The utilities must hate this bill.
• 3:06
  [Guest] Duke Energy's chief executive, Harry Sideris, told the Washington Examiner on Tuesday that the idea data centers raise your bill is misinformation. Duke has a queue of data centers waiting to connect, and he says each gigawatt of them, a city's worth of power, saves customers about a billion dollars over the life of its contract, because the data center pays for the plant up front.
• 3:29
  [Host] If that is true, why does anyone need a law?
• 3:32
  [Guest] Ask North Carolina. The day before, its attorney general asked state regulators to put Duke's data centers in their own rate class, so those promises live in the rulebook regulators enforce, instead of a press release. The governor's words were that data centers must pay their own way.
• 3:48
  [Host] So a state got there before the House did.
• 3:51
  [Guest] The states are where the money actually moves. A rate class is a rule with a number in it. The House bill is a request to hold a hearing.
• 4:01
  [Host] And the Senate?
• 4:02
  [Guest] John Thune, who runs it, would not commit this week to the bill even getting a vote there. He said it would likely need every senator to agree to skip the debate.
• 4:13
  [Host] So even the suggestion might not survive.
• 4:16
  [Guest] The fight stopped being about whether to build some time ago. It is about who pays, and that still holds. What changed this week is that Washington answered, and the answer is whoever the states decide, whenever they get around to it.
• 4:30
  [Host] So the vote everyone will campaign on is the one that changes the least.
• 4:35
  [Guest] And the hearing nobody will campaign on is the one that changes your bill, so the thing to check is whether your own state's utility commission has a data center rate class yet. For more on who pays for AI's electricity, and why the buildout's bill arrives before its payoff, head to unscarcity dot ai. The book is on Amazon, the audiobook is on Spotify. This has been Minds, Bodies, and Terawatts.