Energy & Grid Management
Molly Glick
Molly Glick
Energy Central Team
·Posted in Energy & Grid Management
Wed, Jul 22

NEWS: Congress is targeting data centers in an updated version of the Ratepayer Protection Act.

  • The background: The bill, which just advanced to the House of Representatives, would create a federal standard to make large loads pay for transmission upgrades and new generation…and states would be required to consider it. Legislators recently edited the bill to exclusively cover data centers (an earlier draft included all large loads 100 MW or above). 

  • The takeaway: The update puts more pressure on data centers, backing ratepayer concerns. So far, the bill is still receiving bipartisan support—but Democrats also want to tackle data centers’ pollution and water use.

  • In other data center news: Not long after enacting NY’s one-year data center ban, Gov. Kathy Hochul is pushing to scrap state and local tax breaks for these facilities.

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