Democratic senators investigate data centers’ effects on electricity prices

Elizabeth Warren, Richard Blumenthal and Chris Van Hollen go after tech firms including Google and Amazon

Three Democratic US senators announced Tuesday that they are investigating whether big tech companies are passing the soaring utility costs of energy-guzzling" data centers on to ordinary Americans. The trio sent letters to the heads of Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta as well as the data center operators CoreWeave, Digital Realty and Equinix asking for greater transparency, cost-sharing and accountability.

Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut wrote that they were alarmed by reports that these data centers caused residential electricity bills to skyrocket". Regions with significant data center activity have already endured price increases by as much as 267% over the past five years, the three lawmakers wrote. According to the Energy Information Administration, a federal agency, the average cost of a US family's electricity bill had risen 7% year-over-year as of September.