Artificial Intelligence

Marc Oestreich | 12.23.2025 4:00 PM

A simple story has taken hold in American politics: Big Tech is consuming vast amounts of electricity to power artificial intelligence, and ordinary households are paying the price.

It's a tidy narrative with a villain, a victim, and a moral. It also happens to be wrong.

In Washington, in statehouses, and increasingly in town halls, data-center projects are being stalled or blocked by communities convinced they're about to be priced out of their own electricity. Fear is outrunning evidence. Demand is cast as the problem and technology as the threat. Energy abundance is presented as something to fear rather than build.

That belief now has institutional backing.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) has opened a Senate investigation into whether AI data centers are driving up Americans' electricity bills—but the verdict is already baked in. In letters sent to utilities and hyperscalers, Warren and other Senate Democrats allege that rapid growth in data-center demand is forcing costly grid upgrades and shifting those costs onto households. One utility, Indiana Michigan Power, estimates it will spend $17 billion to meet projected data-center demand—costs Warren suggests will land on ratepayers. 

"Data centers' energy usage has caused residential electricity bills to skyrocket," the Senate Democrats said, adding that utilities are "passing the extra costs onto their customers." Demand, they argue, is pushing prices out of control.

Across the country, local governments are absorbing the same message and translating it into vetoes. Projects are delayed. Permits denied. A national policy failure is reframed as a local act of self-defense.

AI and energy have become the twin boogeymen of modern politics. AI is blamed for........

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