March 25, 2026
Mr. Scott of Florida (for himself and Mr. Marshall) submitted the following concurrent resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
Expressing the sense of Congress that the Ratepayer Protection Pledge announced on March 4, 2026, reflects sound national policy to protect ratepayers in the United States, promote electricity affordability, and ensure that all people of the United States, including households, small businesses, schools, hospitals, and farms, have access to reliable and affordable energy as artificial intelligence and data center infrastructure expands across the United States.
Whereas data centers consumed approximately 183 terawatt-hours of electricity in the United States in 2024, which is more than 4 percent of total national electricity consumption in the United States;
Whereas the Department of Energy projects that the share of total national electricity consumption in the United States that is consumed by data centers could reach up to 12 percent by 2028 as artificial intelligence workloads require continuously operating, high power density computing infrastructure at unprecedented scale;
Whereas, under the traditional utility regulatory model, the costs of building, upgrading, and maintaining the transmission and distribution infrastructure required to service new large industrial loads are socialized across all ratepayers through rate proceedings, meaning that households and small businesses in the United States effectively subsidize the electricity infrastructure of some of the most highly capitalized companies in history;
Whereas, because data centers cluster geographically rather than diffuse evenly across the electric grid, the impact of data centers on local electricity rates is acute and uneven; and
Whereas, on March 4, 2026, Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, and xAI signed the Ratepayer Protection Pledge at the White House, committing to negotiate separate rate structures with utilities and State governments wherever those signatories build data centers and to pay those rates for generation and delivery infrastructure whether or not the signatories consume the electricity, establishing a pay-whether-used obligation that, alongside protecting ratepayers from infrastructure cost-shifting, creates an incentive for the signatories to make their backup generation resources available to grid operators during scarcity events, thereby enhancing reliability for all people of the United States: Now, therefore, be it
That—
(1)
it is the Sense of Congress that—
(A)
the Ratepayer Protection Pledge announced on March 4, 2026, reflects sound national policy founded on the principle that the people of the United States should not be required to foot the bill for private data center energy and infrastructure costs;
(B)
the artificial intelligence data center boom in the United States should be leveraged to address electricity affordability and benefit all households and businesses in the United States; and
(C)
relevant Federal agencies, including the Department of Energy and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, should support and facilitate the implementation of the commitments made in the Ratepayer Protection Pledge, including by working with private companies to expedite the permitting and interconnection of new energy generation resources; and
(2)
Congress encourages additional artificial intelligence companies, hyperscalers, data center operators, and technology firms that have not yet signed the Ratepayer Protection Pledge to voluntarily adopt equivalent commitments without delay.