{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/senator-warren-lawmakers-open-investigation-into-big-tech-data-centers-role-in-driving-up-families-utility-costs", "Senator Warren, Lawmakers Open Investigation into Big Tech Data Centers\u2019 Role in Driving Up Families\u2019 Utility Costs", "2025-12-16", "2025", "2025-12", "Democrat", "Senate", "MA", "Elizabeth Warren", "W000817", "www.warren.senate.gov", "warren", "https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases", "scraper", "Senator Warren, Lawmakers Open Investigation into Big Tech Data Centers\u2019 Role in Driving Up Families\u2019 Utility Costs\n\nAs AI and Big Tech firms, including Google, Amazon, and Meta, build energy-guzzling data centers and make opaque agreements with utility companies, consumers are left holding the bill for these trillion-dollar companies.\n\nText of Letters (PDF)\n\nWashington, D.C. \u2013 Today, U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) opened an investigation into the extent to which big tech data centers are driving up consumers\u2019 electricity costs. The senators sent letters to Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, CoreWeave, Digital Realty, and Equinix.\n\n\u201cWe write in light of alarming reports that tech companies are passing on the costs of building and operating their data centers to ordinary Americans as AI data centers\u2019 energy usage has caused residential electricity bills to skyrocket in nearby communities,\u201d wrote the lawmakers. \u201cThrough these utility price increases, American families bankroll the electricity costs of trillion-dollar tech companies.\u201d\n\nAs American AI companies build new models, their AI data centers require more and more energy from the grid. A single data center uses enough electricity to power hundreds of thousands of homes, and the U.S. Department of Energy projects that data centers could make up 12% of all U.S. power consumption by 2028.\n\nAs a result, utility companies have spent billions of dollars updating the electrical grid to accommodate the data centers\u2019 unprecedented energy demands, including building expensive new transmission lines and power plants. These infrastructure buildouts cost billions of dollars: the utility Indiana Michigan Power estimates that building new power plants to meet data center demand in the region will cost $17 billion over the next several years. These costs appear to be recouped by raising residential utility bills, meaning American consumers could end up subsidizing the energy demands of Big Tech. Since President Trump took office, household electric bills have gone up 13% nationally.\n\n\u201cRecent increases to consumers\u2019 utility bills are directly linked to the tech industry\u2019s data center buildout,\u201d wrote the lawmakers. \u201cWhen utilities expand their grid infrastructure, they incorporate the cost of expansion into their utility rates, passing the extra costs onto their customers.\u201d\n\nThe contracts between data centers and utility companies are almost always confidential, leaving the public in the dark on why their electric bill keeps going up. That\u2019s why the senators are pushing for answers from these companies and asking them what they intend to do to mitigate these cost concerns.\n\n\u201cTech companies have paid lip service in support of covering their data centers\u2019 energy costs, but their actions have shown the opposite\u2026 And on top of failing to pay their fair share of their electricity rates, tech companies regularly hide as much information as possible from the communities in which their data centers will be built,\u201d continued the lawmakers. \u201cTo protect consumers, data centers must pay a greater share of the costs upfront for future energy usage and updates to the electrical grid provided specifically to accommodate data centers\u2019 energy needs.\u201d\n\nThe senators are pushing these companies for answers to their probe by no later than January 12, 2026.", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T20:09:11Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/senator-warren-lawmakers-open-investigation-into-big-tech-data-centers-role-in-driving-up-families-utility-costs"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.6499341689050198, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}