In a move to shield American households from rising utility costs, Senators Rick Scott and Roger Marshall introduced a concurrent resolution last week backing a new “Ratepayer Protection Pledge.”
The measure aims to ensure that massive tech companies—not local families—pay for the heavy electrical infrastructure required to run the nation’s rapidly expanding network of data centers.
The resolution follows an agreement signed at the White House on March 4, 2026, by industry giants including Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, and xAI. Under the terms of that pledge, these companies committed to negotiating separate rate structures.
This “pay-whether-used” model requires the firms to cover the costs of building and maintaining power lines and generation facilities regardless of their specific energy consumption, effectively preventing those expenses from being rolled into the monthly bills of standard residential customers.
Data center energy use is currently skyrocketing. While these facilities accounted for roughly 4% of U.S. electricity consumption in 2024, the Department of Energy projects that figure could hit 12% by 2028, driven largely by the high-density computing needs of artificial intelligence.
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Traditionally, when a utility company builds new infrastructure to support a large industrial user, the cost is often shared across all ratepayers in that region.
“Florida families – and families across the nation – shouldn’t be supporting Big Tech companies’ expansions with their electricity bills,” Senator Rick Scott stated. “President Trump was right to get these companies to commit to footing their own bill, and this resolution supports him as he continues his fight for affordability for American families.”
Senator Marshall echoed these concerns, focusing on the localized impact in states like Kansas where data centers tend to cluster.
“I’ve heard from Kansans who are concerned that infrastructure costs for data centers could be pushed onto households, small businesses, schools, hospitals, and farms across the state,” Marshall said. “Kansans work hard for their money, and they should not need to worry that their utility rates will rise thanks to the growth of data centers.”
Beyond cost-shifting, the resolution highlights a secondary benefit to the grid. By forcing tech companies to invest in their own backup power and infrastructure, the pledge creates an incentive for these firms to share their energy resources with the public grid during emergencies or power shortages.
The resolution officially asks the Department of Energy and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to help implement these commitments. It also calls on other tech firms and data center operators that have not yet signed the pledge to voluntarily join the agreement to protect national energy affordability.
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