Data Centers Are Increasing Consumer Energy Costs In Mid-Atlantic, Say Panelists
Bipartisan support backs having tech companies install power generation and pay for infrastructure upgrades to cover their needs.
WASHINGTON, March 3, 2026 – Imagine two cities the size of Baltimore coming on the grid each year without the energy capacity to cover the increased usage.
This is the scale of increase data centers are adding to the PJM grid, according to a group panelists who spoke at The Brookings Institution on Monday. The PJM is the regional power grid that operates in 12 states and the District of Columbia, stretching from the Midwest to the Mid-Atlantic.
Dr. Joseph Bowring, president of monitoring analytics, a PJM market monitoring service, noted that despite a recent focus on household electrification and electric vehicle usage, increased energy prices are being driven directly by data centers, according to the data.
“PJM is tight, and if you add more demand, add the need for more capacity, everyone's gonna pay that cost because you're driving up the marginal cost, that's really the underlying dynamic,” Bowring, president of monitoring analytics. “There’s no spare capacity.”
Consumers are paying a premium for that capacity according to Bowring. As data centers have been added to the grid in the past few years, customers have seen a 14% increase in their bills, due to the lack of new power coming onto the grid and increased demand.
Brandon Piepont, director of electricity at Energy Innovation, a climate policy think tank, added that despite recent improvements in reducing the backlog of approvals for new capacity, power plants are not being added to the grid as fast as data centers are built, and likely will not be able to catch up.
“If we have to wait for 5 years for a project to get through the interconnection queue, and another several years for it to get through permitting, there's really no hope in supplying new data center demand by 2027 or 2028, because those timelines are so radically different,” Piepont said.
Piepont added that in the near term, cost allocation can be addressed by state houses and governors to ensure rate payers are not bearing the brunt of these additional costs.
Policy makers in both parties have recognized that this issue needs to be dealt with. At the State of The Union, President Donald Trump announced a negotiated “Rate Payer Protection Pledge” which would obligate tech companies to supply on-site energy for data centers to prevent rate hikes for consumers in the communities where they are located, according to the President.
In January, Reps. Rob Menendez D-N.J. and Greg Casar D-Texas introduced the “PRICE act”, a bill that will require data center companies to provide their own on-site renewable energy to reduce strain on the grid.
Companies including Microsoft, Google and Amazon have already made public commitments to supply on-site energy production and pay for grid and transmission upgrades.
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