September 2, 2026

Your Power Bill Is Now an AI Story

Seven in ten Americans don't want a data center nearby, governors of both parties are hitting pause, and the grid operator for the East Coast just put a number on what the buildout costs everyone else.

The facts:

• On Monday the president posted that communities refusing data centers will "end up being backwards and poor," and told them to "let Data Reign" (ABC News, Al Jazeera)
• A Gallup poll in March found 71% of Americans oppose an AI data center in their area; an August Heatmap Pro survey found 15% support and 75% opposition, versus 43% support a year earlier (Al Jazeera, Vox)
• Pennsylvania's Democratic governor signed an executive order he called the "strictest guardrails in the nation," Texas's Republican governor froze new grid connections pending an audit, New York paused environmental permits for a year, and Florida guaranteed local governments the right to say no (Fox News, Houston Public Media, Reason)
• In PJM, the grid that serves 13 states from Illinois to New Jersey, current and forecast data center demand made up 9% of the wholesale price of power through July, about $10.48 per megawatt-hour, and the total wholesale cost of power was up 46% from a year earlier (Utility Dive, citing PJM's market monitor)
• PJM has asked federal regulators to require big new loads to bring their own power supply, and to put those that don't first in line to be cut on the hottest and coldest days; it wants a decision within 60 days (Virginia Mercury via WTOP)
• New Jersey now requires data centers to pay for at least 85% of the capacity they request for ten years; in Indiana, a utility deal with Amazon and Google has the utility asking to cut base rates by $59 million in 2027, about $100 a year for an average household (Fox News)
• In California, PG&E spent $2.86 million on lobbying between April and June, its second biggest quarter since 1999, as seven data center bills moved toward a vote (CalMatters via KQED)
• The vice president said "probably 99% of the backlash" comes from places where a data center means higher electricity bills, and that builders "should be putting power back into the grid" (ABC News)

Nobody voted on this. A year ago a data center was a warehouse with a humming sound, and the poll numbers were roughly even. Now it polls about like abolishing the police, Vox's comparison, and both parties have noticed.

The part that makes this different from the usual not-in-my-backyard fight is that the bill shows up whether or not the thing is in your backyard. Grid costs get spread across everyone on the grid. That's how it's always worked, and it was fine when the biggest new customer was a factory. It stops being fine when the new customer wants as much power as a mid-sized city and there are forty of them in the queue.

PJM's own market monitor did the math. Nine percent of the wholesale price of power this year, in a grid that covers 65 million people, traces to data center demand that either exists or is forecast. And that's just the capacity piece. It doesn't count what the same demand does to the price of energy or transmission.

the fix everyone is circling

Every proposal on the table is a version of the same sentence: you want the power, you pay for the power.

New Jersey wrote it into law. Commit to 85% of what you asked for, for ten years, so ratepayers aren't stuck with a substation built for a campus that never opened. Indiana did it as a deal between the utility, consumer groups and the companies, and the utility now says the new customers are why it can propose a rate cut. PJM wants to make "bring your own power" the rule for the whole East Coast, with a sharp edge: if you didn't, you're the first one switched to backup generators when it's 98 degrees.

The administration's version is a voluntary pledge signed in March by Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle and xAI. Consumer advocates want it mandatory. That gap, voluntary versus law, is most of what the lobbying money in Sacramento is about.

the case for the other side

Reason's argument is worth hearing straight. Loudoun County, Virginia, the densest data center market on earth, has cut property taxes by nearly 30% in a decade. Meta put $1.7 million into schools around Temple, Texas. A Meta project in Louisiana is funding teacher bonuses up to $50,000. The companies do put money in. And Vox's reporting says the boom is still bigger than the backlash: opposition can slow it and move it, but the demand for compute is strong enough that it'll get built somewhere.

That "somewhere" is the whole question for any town with cheap power, cold winters and empty industrial land. The towns that say no will watch the tax base go to the town that said yes.

There's a retiree in Lewisport, Kentucky, named Gary Elder, 69, on a fixed income, who told his state's utility commission in July that a 500 megawatt project nearby might push his bill toward $1,000. That number may be wrong. The point is he's the one who has to guess, and the companies asking for the power are the ones who know.

PJM asked for a federal answer within 60 days. That clock runs out around the start of November.

Sources: ABC News, Al Jazeera, Vox, Fox News, Houston Public Media, KERA, Reason, Utility Dive, Virginia Mercury via WTOP, CalMatters via KQED.