I will soon introduce legislation to prevent Pennsylvania residents and small businesses from subsidizing energy costs driven by large data center operations. This proposal is modeled on Oregon’s recently enacted POWER Act (HB 3546), which established a dedicated rate class for high‑load data centers and required them, not residents or small businesses, to fully cover the cost of their infrastructure buildout and operations. 

Nationwide, data center energy use is projected to double by 2030, fueled by generative artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing. Oregon, whose POWER Act provides the model for this bill, saw data center loads grow to over 10% of statewide electricity consumption in just a few years; and Pennsylvania is poised to see similar growth along major transmission corridors. With major data center projects proposed along PJM transmission lines, we must act before these projects are approved and costs are passed on to ordinary ratepayers through future rate increases

Without reform, the cost of utility infrastructure built to serve massive data center facilities will fall on everyday Pennsylvanians, even though they receive little to no benefit from these projects. Oregon lawmakers acted decisively to stop this; Pennsylvania must do the same.

Under Oregon’s bipartisan POWER Act, facilities with a peak demand of 20 megawatts (MW) or more are designated as “high‑load customers” and are required to pay the full incremental costs of energy and grid upgrades. The law also gave regulators the authority to prevent cost-shifting and protect residential customers from rate increases.  

My legislation will mirror Oregon’s POWER Act by creating a dedicated High-Load Customer Class in Pennsylvania that will apply to new or expanding data centers with a peak demand of 20 megawatts (MW) or more.  This legislation will also mandate Cost-Responsibility Contracts for all data center facilities, including power plants for co-located data centers (co-location is the practice in which data centers are built next to an existing power plant and share interconnection with the grid) requiring long-term service agreements of no less than 10 years to ensure facilities cover the full infrastructure costs they generate. This legislation will also empower the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PA PUC) to set cost-allocation rules, monitor compliance, and protect non-industrial customers from rate increases. Finally, this legislation will require annual reporting of electricity and water usage to support community transparency and grid planning. 

This legislation will protect ratepayers by preventing unfair cost-shifting onto residents, small businesses, schools, and local governments by ensuring that data center infrastructure is funded by the entities that develop, operate and benefit from them. This legislation will help build public trust and ensure utility rate equity by keeping costs stable and affordable.

Please join me in co‑sponsoring this important legislation to ensure Pennsylvania residents and small businesses are safeguarded from subsidizing the exponential energy costs of hyperscale data centers.