You're Paying for AI in Your Electric Bill: The Debate Over How to Power America's Data Centers

Data centers, once largely out of sight, out of mind, have moved to the center of a growing national debate.

In Ashburn, Virginia, data centers sit just steps from parks, trails, and homes. The area, known as Data Center Alley, handles roughly 70 percent of the world's internet traffic, and with the explosive growth of artificial intelligence, demand is skyrocketing.

"The number of data centers already under construction, never mind forecasts, is greater than all the data centers we've built in the last 20 years," said Mark Mills, Executive Director of the National Center for Energy Analytics.

Mills has tracked this industry for more than two decades. He tells CBN News that while Northern Virginia is where data centers are currently the most concentrated, the need for more land and power means rapid expansion in all directions.

"They're being built all over the country, in almost every state...The highest concentration of new announced plans is Texas," he explained.

As development accelerates, so does backlash.

"These are large structures, the size of a super Walmart is a good comparison, and they tend to come in clusters, and so we're seeing areas that were farmland two years ago now with a million, a million and a half square feet of buildings," said Chris Miller, President of the Piedmont Environmental Council.

He tracks the impact of data center growth across Virginia.

"You're building something you haven't planned for. It's huge. It's going to cost hundreds of billions of dollars, and we might end up being stuck with the bill. People are already seeing big jumps in their electrical bill over the last two years, it's been in the range of 30 percent," Miller told CBN News.

He admits there's no stopping data centers, but the goal is to hopefully slow down construction and plan for their impact. The outcry over who foots the bill has reached inside the beltway, with President Trump making it clear that big tech should not pass the cost on to Americans.

"We're telling the major tech companies that they have the obligation to provide for their own power needs," Trump said during his February State of the Union address.

With the rise of AI, Mills predicts the U.S. would need an additional country's worth of electricity added to the grid over the next five to ten years.

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