Data Centers Ready – The Senate Wants to See Your Energy Bills

Two U.S. senators on Thursday fired the latest salvo in an increasingly active front against data centers and their energy uses. Senators Josh Hawley and Elizabeth Warren sent a letter to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) asking it to collect details about energy use from data centers — and how that use affects the grid.

The senators urged the EIA “to establish mandatory annual reporting requirements for data centers and other large loads,” they wrote in the letter, which was seen by TechCrunch. “As electricity demand growth continues to accelerate after years of relative stagnation, the lack of reliable and standardized data on bulk energy consumption poses significant risks to effective grid planning and oversight.” Wired was first to report the message.

The letter is not the first step by politicians to try to place new regulatory requirements on data centres. Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Wednesday they will introduce legislation that would halt the construction of new data centers until Congress can reach an agreement on how to regulate artificial intelligence.

Energy use in data centers has increased dramatically in recent years. For example, Google’s data centers doubled their consumption between 2020 and 2024. This trend is unlikely to change in the near future. By 2035, the planned new data centers will almost triple the sector’s energy demand.

An EIA is a government agency charged with collecting and analyzing data related to the energy system – like the Census Bureau for the grid. It was established in 1977 under the Department of Energy following the oil shocks of the early 1970s.

Over the decades, the EIA has amassed a wealth of information about energy use in the United States, including costs, generation sources, and energy efficiency programs. It also tracks how different sectors use energy, although it only focuses on four very broad categories: residential, commercial, industrial and transportation.

Hawley and Warren are also asking the EIA to collect more granular information about data centers, including how power consumption varies between AI computing tasks and public cloud services.

The senators have very specific requests regarding what that data should look like, including hourly, annual and peak power loads, and the prices businesses pay. They also want to know which network upgrades are required by adding large new loads, how those upgrades are paid for, and whether data center customers participate in demand response programs, where utilities pay heavy users to reduce their usage for a period of time.

The letter calls out EIA Director Tristan Abbey, who said in December that the agency would be a “key player” in collecting data on energy demand from data centers. Hawley and Warren asked the agency to respond to their letter by April 9.

It is possible that the process is already underway, although the EIA has not been shared publicly if so. Changes to EIA surveys must go through the Office of Management and Budget process, which requires a public comment period.

“We receive requests for analysis quite often,” Abe said at the public event in December. “We receive requests for an actual new product less frequently.” “It would probably take about two years to start a new survey from scratch. But there are authorities where you can avoid the two-year process by doing surveys on a smaller scale, but it would probably be a clearer signal.”