Politicians scramble on data centers after putting their voters on the hook for Big Tech's job-killing AI efforts | Fortune

"As outrage spreads over energy-hungry data centers, politicians from President Donald Trump to local lawmakers have found rare bipartisan agreement over insisting that tech companies - and not regular people - must foot the bill for the exorbitant amount of electricity required for artificial intelligence. But that might be where the agreement ends. The price of powering data centers has become deeply intertwined with concerns over the cost of living, a dominant issue in the upcoming midterm elections."

"'Fair share' is a pretty squishy term, and so it's something that the industry likes to say because 'fair' can mean different things to different people," said Ari Peskoe, who directs the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard University. It's a shift from last year, when states worked to woo massive data center projects and Trump directed his administration to do everything it could to get them electricity."

"Anger over the issue has already had electoral consequences, with Democrats ousting two Republicans from Georgia's utility regulatory commission in November. "Voters are already connecting the experience of these facilities with their electricity costs and they're going to increasingly want to know how government is going to navigate that," said Christopher Borick, a pollster and director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion."

Energy-hungry data centers are driving up local electricity demand and costs, prompting bipartisan pressure from national and local politicians for technology companies to pay more of the power bill. The phrase "fair share" lacks a clear definition, producing disagreement over what tech contributions should entail. States that previously competed to attract massive data center investments are seeing local backlash as utilities' bills rise. Voter concern has translated into electoral consequences, including ousted regulators. Communities and officials are increasingly focused on how government and utilities will manage data center growth while meeting surging demand for computing power to run generative AI services.

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