Senators Warren and Hawley Push Data Centers Energy Transparency to Protect Ratepayers

Senators Elizabeth Warren and Josh Hawley Push for Data Center Energy Transparency

In a bipartisan team-up, Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Republican Sen. Josh Hawley are demanding more transparency regarding the energy use of data centers. The pair sent a letter to the Energy Information Administration on Thursday, urging the EIA to "establish a mandatory annual reporting requirement for data centers." Wired reported the news earlier. Data centers have become a major topic of debate, as tech giants like Amazon Web Services, Google, Meta and Microsoft continue to buy massive amounts of land to house artificial intelligence data centers. While some landowners are taking the payouts, others -- like a Kentucky woman and her mother, who turned down $26 million to sell their land -- are holding out because of their opposition to data centers. The interested buyer in Kentucky remains anonymous, but the landowner told WLKY they were described as a "major artificial intelligence company." Not only do data centers need large plots of land for their infrastructure, but they also require substantial water and electricity to operate. The exact amounts are not always known, which is why the senators are urging the change. The collected information would help with grid planning and "will support policymaking to prevent large companies from increasing electricity costs for American families," Warren and Hawley's letter stated in part. BloombergNEF reports that by 2035, the energy demand for data centers will more than double. On Wednesday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders introduced a bill to pause all data center construction until the government enacts safeguards. "AI and robotics are creating the most sweeping technological revolution in the history of humanity," Sanders said in a statement. "The scale, scope and speed of that change is unprecedented. Congress is way behind where it should be in understanding the nature of this revolution and its impacts."

Senators want datacenters to come clean on power consumption

Ratepayer Protection Pledge is unenforceable without hard numbers, Warren and Hawley argue US senators are pushing to require datacenters and other large energy customers to report consumption, arguing the data is essential to hold them accountable to local communities. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Josh Hawley have written [PDF] to the Energy Information Administration (EIA) - the official energy statistics agency of the US government - urging it to establish mandatory annual reporting for large loads such as datacenters. The letter references the Ratepayer Protection Pledge that President Trump urged the biggest AI and cloud companies to sign earlier this month. The agreement intends to shield American consumers in the event that bills rise due to AI's growing energy appetite. However, as The Register noted at the time, there is no enforcement mechanism. Senators Warren and Hawley say both Congress and the public currently lack the data needed to hold these companies to this voluntary pledge. Standardized reporting is essential to delivering the oversight necessary to combat rising utility costs. "To ensure adherence to these commitments, and to better understand the current and future impact of datacenters and other large loads on the electrical grid, it is critical that EIA mandate annual, comprehensive reporting for these entities," the letter adds. With electricity demand now growing rapidly after years of relative stagnation, the senators argue that unreliable data on massive energy users poses serious risks to grid planning. Utilities rely on demand projections from customers like datacenters when deciding whether to build costly new infrastructure, and those costs are typically passed to residential customers through higher rates. The problem has been building for some time. The Register reported in 2024 that Americans faced a 70 percent hike in electricity bills by the end of the decade, unless action was taken to boost generation and transmission capacity. By late last year, senators were already raising concerns about datacenters increasing costs for consumers. The letter asks the EIA to collect hourly consumption, annual consumption, and peak demand data; electricity rates paid; load flexibility and demand response strategies; and a breakdown of energy use by AI-configured servers versus other workloads such as cloud services. It also calls for data on what transmission and distribution upgrades large loads require, and how those costs are shared among customers. Without this data, policymakers, utility companies, and local communities are operating in the dark, so the senators also want to see the EIA make the collected information publicly available. These proposals are likely to face pushback from the industry, mirroring resistance to the European Commission's Energy Efficiency Directive, which imposed mandatory reporting on datacenters above a certain size. Recent US legislation targeting datacenter emissions has already been shelved after lobbying opposition. The Trump administration has also moved to strip back regulations it sees as obstacles to its AI ambitions, blocking states from implementing their own AI rules, and weakening nuclear safety directives to accelerate reactor construction. ®