A rush to build more energy infrastructure is driven in part by inflated estimates of US data centre growth. That means households and small businesses could face higher electricity bills – even if AI demand falters
By Jeremy Hsu
17 July 2025
Even speculative AI energy demand can raise electricity bills
Oscar Wong/Getty Images
Tech companies’ artificial intelligence ambitions will require a massive expansion in electricity-hungry data centres. This surging demand risks raising electricity bills for everyone – even if some data centres are never built.
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US utility companies are rushing to build more power plants, transmission lines and gas pipelines to meet the rapidly growing electricity requirements of data centres. Residential electricity costs in the US have already increased nearly 30 per cent since 2021 – faster than inflation – according to a report by PowerLines, a US non-profit organisation focused on utility regulation. The past two years alone saw nationwide electricity bill increases of $10 billion each year.
Now a new report commissioned by the Southern Environmental Law Center, an environmental non-profit organisation based in Virginia, warns forecasts of electricity use overestimate the demand from speculative data centre plans, which could drive utility costs even higher. In particular, developers often submit redundant requests for electrical service in multiple regions for each data centre project – before ever committing to one location.
“If the projected data centre load doesn’t fully materialise – which all evidence and, frankly, common sense at this point is pointing to – ratepayers will ultimately bear that economic burden of the unnecessary and underutilized gas and electric infrastructure,” says Megan Gibson at the Southern Environmental Law Center.
Former executives from companies like Google and Meta have themselves acknowledged the practice of making redundant requests for data centre electricity is common, the report notes. “Tech executives have said the quiet part out loud already,” says Gibson. New Scientist reached out to Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft about their data centre development plans, but did not receive any additional comments.