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As Millions Endure Extreme Heat, Climate Group Tells Congress: 'Protect People, Not Data Centers'
"The reason the grid has so little headroom is that data centers are consuming electricity at a scale it wasn't built for, around the clock, every day of the year," said a 350.org campaigner.
Jul 03, 2026
With at least 250 million people across the Midwest and Eastern United States facing high temperatures on Friday due to what the National Weather Service dubbed a "prolonged, dangerous heatwave" that's expected to last through Fourth of July weekend, a leading climate group called on Congress to "protect people, not data centers."
Specifically, 350.org—an international movement for climate action founded nearly two decades ago—wants US lawmakers "to establish a moratorium on new data centers and ban utility companies from cutting off electricity access of American households who can't afford to pay their bills, as an emergency measure to protect lives."
The group on Friday shared an online tool that allows Americans to send an editable letter to Congress with the latter demand. It stresses that deadly summer heatwaves are "fueled by climate change," and "in 27 states, it's perfectly legal for utility companies to shut off your electricity if you fall behind on your bills, even on the hottest days of summer."
Candice Fortin, 350's energy affordability campaigns manager, said in a Friday statement that "no American should lose their life over an electric bill. Losing air conditioning in this heat isn't an inconvenience—it's life-threatening. Air conditioning in a dangerous heatwave is what keeps elderly people, pregnant women, and young children out of the emergency room, and higher use during summer heatwaves is something every utility plans for."
"Yet ordinary households are once again paying the highest price for a crisis they didn't cause," Fortin explained. "The reason the grid has so little headroom is that data centers are consuming electricity at a scale it wasn't built for, around the clock, every day of the year. And worse: fed by fossil-fueled energy sources that make heatwaves more frequent and more deadly."
As data centers contributed to the strain on US power grids on Thursday, Data for Progress released poll results showing that—along with billionaires, many of whom have made their fortunes from Big Tech—Americans see the artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency companies that are driving the surge in data center construction as top villains to US society and the economy.
To reduce grid strain and the risk of blackouts, the US Department of Energy this week granted permission to PJM Interconnection, which serves 67 million people across 13 states, to force data centers to temporarily use backup generators if necessary. However, such systems generally run on diesel or gas, which means more air pollution for surrounding communities.
Fortin said Friday that "350.org is calling for a moratorium on new data center construction, to give citizens and their elected representatives time to put democratic rules in place to manage their impact on our energy, water, and land."
Two progressive firebrands, US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), recently introduced a bill to do just that. Their proposed Artificial Intelligence Data Center Moratorium Act is endorsed by Food & Water Watch (FWW), which last year became the country's first national organization to call for halting approval of new AI data centers and, ultimately, in December, led a related letter to Congress backed by hundreds of other advocacy organizations, including multiple 350 chapters.
Since that letter, Big Tech has continued to make billions. Fortin noted that "Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta raked in net profits of over $80 billion in the first three months of 2026 alone. In fact, investor-owned utilities kept, on average, a profit of 14.6 cents on every dollar they collected from ratepayers. They can afford to wait while communities catch up."
The current heatwave "is a preview of every summer to come," she warned. "Our leaders must choose who they will protect: tech companies and investor-owned utilities, or people. Access to clean, affordable energy is a right, not a privilege. Real independence means no American is ever again forced to choose between a power bill they can't afford and heat they can't survive."
Over the past few years, calls for state and national bans on utility shutoffs have mounted, particularly during hot and cold spells. During another period of high temperatures last summer, the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) led a pair of letters to Democratic congressional leaders as well as governors and mayors arguing that Republican US President Donald Trump "has put millions of lives at risk by dismantling federal agencies and lifesaving programs that help working families keep their homes cool and survive deadly heatwaves like the one this week."
The coalition—which also included FWW and 350—urged the New York Democrats who serve as minority leaders in the US Senate and House of Representatives, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, to fight for legislation that includes "a robust nationwide moratorium on electricity, water, and broadband shutoffs during months of extreme heat, and mandate that utilities reinstate disconnected services, waive late-payment fees, and forgive all utility debt for low-wealth households."
Months later, this past April, the US Energy Information Administration released a report showing that utility companies disconnected American households from electricity more than 13.4 million times in 2024—which, as CBD pointed out, came as "electric utilities raked in record profits of more than $54 billion and dividend payments of $34 billion," and "investor-owned utility executives were paid $530 million."
Jean Su, director of the CBD's energy justice program, said at the time that "this federal data is the most sobering portrait we have of the country's brutal energy affordability crisis... It's inexcusable for utility executives and shareholders to make record profits while families suffer climate extremes and get punished for being poor."
"We're grateful to Congress and the Energy Information Administration for establishing the first-ever study of how many millions of people are having their power shut off because they can't afford to pay," she added. "The only sure way out of this mess is to replace the price gouging of fossil fuel utilities with affordable, renewable community energy."
As Friday reporting from The Washington Post highlighted, it's not just potential utility shutoffs endangering Americans in the 23 states under an "extreme heat warning" from NWS. The newspaper found that although "about 93% of homes have air conditioning nationwide, as do 96% of households in the areas with high heat risk this week," around 3 million households currently impacted by soaring temperatures lack AC.
"Access and use of air conditioning is extremely important," Jaime Madrigano, associate professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told the Post. "We know that air conditioning is probably one of the only really proven effective strategies that we know actually does save lives when it comes to heat-related mortality."
Madrigano also recognized those who have AC units or systems at home, but are struggling to pay for them amid rising costs across the economy: "We know a lot of people are dealing with high utility bills. That's a very pressing crisis in this country right now," she said. "You may have to choose between food and medications or air conditioning, and the more pressing concern may be feeding your family."
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The Storm Bill Is Coming; Ratepayers Are Paying It Twice
Rising storm damage, opaque cost recovery, and inaccessible proceedings are making utility rate cases one of the defining economic justice battlegrounds of our time.
Mar 29, 2026
Across the US, electric utility customers are being asked to pay for the same storms twice. First, they pay the costs of the damage through rate increases and special adjustors that quietly appear on monthly bills. Then they pay again as infrastructure investment charges that utilities say will prevent the next storm from costing so much. The accounting for what happened with the money is rarely provided. When called to account, they are pointed to bureaucratic filing systems that require expert navigation to decode.
This is not a bug in the utility regulatory system. For utilities, it is a feature.
The evidence is hiding in plain sight. It’s available to everyone inside the regulatory dockets that govern what every household pays for electricity, but these documents are practically inaccessible. And inside them, a pattern is repeating across states, as utilities are collecting ratepayer money to manage storm risk, spending it in bad years, and then updating the recovery mechanism. Simultaneously, they request rate increases to fund infrastructure hardening they say will protect against future storms. The cycle repeats. The bills keep rising. The accounting stays buried.
What the Dockets Actually Show
In Vermont, Green Mountain Power (GMP) collected $6 million annually from customers beginning in fiscal year 2023 as a dedicated Major Storm Restoration Fund. It was established as a separate line item on customer bills to pre-fund major storm restoration costs. The mechanism made sense. Collect in the good years, draw down in the bad ones, smooth the bill impact of catastrophic weather events.
Politicians who want to talk about energy affordability need to understand regulatory proceedings. Saying utility bills are too high is easy. Doing something about it requires visible, deeper engagement.
Then came 2023, the worst storm year in GMP’s 11-year data record. The company incurred $53.6 million in total storm costs, including $45.2 million in major storm expense alone. And 2024 followed with $47 million in total storm costs. Two years of storms accounted for nearly half of all the storm damage GMP recorded over 11 years. The $6 million annual collection covered roughly 13 cents of every dollar in major storm damage incurred in those peak years.
By January 2026, GMP filed its FY2027 rate case, seeking a 7.5% increase, and disclosed that the storm fund would cease. The complete disclosure was one sentence. When Vermont’s ratepayer advocate formally asked GMP to provide a year-by-year table of fund collections and expenditures, GMP essentially declined. It pointed to quarterly filings spread across two separate regulatory dockets and told the regulator that the information was “already available.” No table or verification. They just pointed to a bureaucratic maze that most residential ratepayers would need weeks to navigate. The move suggests that utilities do not consider dockets a place where everyday people might need plain language guidance to understand what will affect their livelihoods.
In New York, a parallel story is unfolding in New York State Electric and Gas’ (NYSEG) service territory. The utility filed for a 35% increase in electric delivery revenues last June. The filing landed on top of a separate Recovery Charge that had already begun appearing on customer bills last February, tied to $710 million in bonds issued to cover nearly a decade of accumulated storm costs. Customers are being asked to pay for the storms twice: once to retire the debt and again to fund the hardening investments the company says will mitigate increasing recovery costs. An independent audit released the same month as the rate filing found that NYSEG had missed its enforceable reliability targets for six consecutive years. And customers are already funding multiple rounds of rate increases explicitly justified as investments in grid resilience.
The pattern is a business model.
Who’s in the Room and Who Isn’t
Utility rate cases are decided in proceedings that look like courtrooms. There is testimony and cross-examination. Detailed exhibits are entered into the record. The parties with legal representation and expert witnesses are the parties with resources to sustain that kind of participation.
The people who are affected by the outcomes almost never appear in the case, because the barrier to participation is genuinely prohibitive. The dockets run to hundreds of thousands of pages. The filings reference prior proceedings going back years. Understanding what a utility is actually asking for requires the kind of institutional expertise that most people simply don’t have the time or resources to develop.
This is the accountability gap that utility regulation was designed to prevent and has done little in practice to close.
Why 2026 Matters
Rate increases of the magnitude being requested across the country are landing on kitchen tables at a moment when many households are already stretched. Utility affordability is not abstract for everyday people in 2026. It affects every household; disproportionately burdens lower-income families; and compounds with rising food costs, insurance premiums, and healthcare expenses.
Utilities are right that storms are worsening and are causing more expensive damage. But those facts do not resolve the question of who bears the cost, how the accounting is done, or whether the evidence supports what utilities are asking for.
Those questions are being answered right now, in regulatory dockets most people have never heard of.
Politicians who want to talk about energy affordability need to understand regulatory proceedings. Saying utility bills are too high is easy. Doing something about it requires visible, deeper engagement.
They need to demonstrate that they can find funding for ratepayer advocates to match utility resources. They need to push for plain-language disclosure requirements so that when a utility shifts storm funding tactics, the accounting isn’t buried.
The 2026 election cycle is the right moment to ensure utility ratemaking on storm cost recovery is transparent. Rate cases are decided in public proceedings. The decisions being made in those dockets right now will appear on customer bills beginning this fall, as voters head to the polls. Candidates who want to talk about affordability should be asked, specifically, what they intend to do about the system producing these bills. The playbook is in the docket. It’s time to open it.
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Power Bills Are Bankrupting DC Residents—but There's a Path to Affordability for All
Public ownership of power has worked for decades in thousands of towns and cities and is being actively pursued in the District and other communities across the country.
Jan 24, 2026
Affordability will remain a top issue in 2026, continuing to draw political attention and likely defining this year’s midterm election races. Among the principal contributors to the cost-of-living crisis are power bills. For millions, the cost of keeping the lights, heating, and cooling on feels like “a second rent,” a problem that the explosive growth in the development and use of AI and associated data center capacity appears poised to aggravate.
The nation’s capital is no exception. A quarter of residents in the District of Columbia are unable to pay their power bill and in debt to the city’s private electricity company Pepco, which prioritizes short-term profits over affordable service. In 2024, the utility sent disconnection notices to 187,000 customers, threatening to shut off their electricity if they did not pay their arrears in full and forcing them to choose between, for instance, keeping their home safe and comfortable and food fresh or making their car payment.
Thankfully, we have a proven alternative–public ownership of power–that has worked for decades in thousands of towns and cities and is being actively pursued in the District and other communities across the country.
Alongside rent, home prices, dining, and entertainment, our electric bills have shot upwards. The only difference? Our power rates are comprehensively regulated. To protect against the monopoly power of Pepco, we have the Public Service Commission (PSC): a three-person board that reviews Pepco’s costs when the company wants to raise rates. Officially, the PSC acts as our watchdog to protect consumers from being billed thousands of dollars each month and to ensure the lights stay on in an environmentally sustainable way. In reality, it’s a depressingly familiar story of corporate capture of government.
We Power DC, a local campaign for energy democracy, has a simple demand: replacing Pepco with an electric utility that belongs to the people of the District.
In just the past few years, Pepco has jacked up rates while slow rolling climate action and energy efficiency. According to a 2023 PSC report, Pepco obtained only 16% of its power supply from renewable energy sources, while it thwarted the adoption of rooftop solar across the city. In response to this bad behavior, the PSC rewarded Pepco: approving a $147.2 million dollar rate increase in 2021 and a $123 million dollar rate hike in 2023. These dollars flow out of the District and into the coffers of Pepco and its holding company owner, Exelon of Chicago.
Despite a wide-ranging outcry from the community, industry experts, and even landlords, the PSC in November 2024 largely approved Pepco’s latest proposed rate increase. Commissioner Richard Beverly wrote a blistering dissent in which he said the other two commissioners were essentially approving the case “because Pepco said so.”
The effects of the rate increase were immediate and expected. Following a cold winter, the additional 5% bump on bills slammed DC residents, with some customers seeing their bills double or triple. Public anger forced Pepco to suspend shutoffs for the first few months of 2025—but both bill collection and the rate increase stayed in place.
Meanwhile, Exelon flaunted the rate hike in DC as a major success, all the while an impending recession looms across the city and the country at large. Even in bleak times, the pursuit of profits by Pepco (and utilities like it) is relentless.
Unfortunately, the District is not an outlier: Regulators across the country rubber-stamp requested rate increases, despite the lack of economic logic. State regulatory agencies liberally reward utility shareholders even though they assume little risk by parking their money in a safe and stable industry.
Fortunately, there is an alternative for all of us. In towns and cities across the country, utilities are not controlled by shareholders—instead, they are governed by the communities that they serve and run on a not-for-profit basis. Public power is a proven model that altogether supplies electricity to about 55 million Americans in around 2,000 towns and cities across red and blue states, including Los Angeles, Nashville, and Seattle. On average, publicly owned utilities provide electricity that is cheaper and more reliable than their shareholder-controlled counterparts. Public power is not foreign or experimental but firmly established in the United States.
Affordable power is not the only argument in favor of public ownership. The urgency of the climate crisis means that we cannot rely solely on cajoling private utilities to remake our power grid. Despite the declining costs and rapid growth of wind and solar over the past 15 years, decarbonization of the American power sector is not happening quickly enough.
Furthermore, for the next few years, the responsibility of cleaning up the power sector will largely fall to state and local governments. Congress’ gutting of the Inflation Reduction Act in the One Big Beautiful Bill means that federal tax credits for wind and solar will soon dry up. Instead of trying to bribe the private sector to invest, we should take control of the climate transition through direct public investment. New York did exactly this in 2023 when it enacted the Build Public Renewables Act (BPRA) and empowered the state-owned New York Power Authority to build large-scale renewable projects and lead a just transition to a clean electric sector.
Inspired by the successful movement behind BPRA and determined to end the unbearable burden of power bills for hundreds of thousands of residents, We Power DC, a local campaign for energy democracy, has a simple demand: replacing Pepco with an electric utility that belongs to the people of the District. A utility governed by us could provide reliable service at lower rates; provide high-quality union jobs; and be a leader, not a laggard, in the fight against climate change. On top of its grassroots organizing, We Power published a report describing in detail how DC would benefit from a publicly owned utility, and how we can get there. While the road to public power can be long, the report outlines key intermediate steps that DC should pursue, including commissioning a study on municipalization of Pepco, taking control of grid planning, and building and operating community solar projects.
We Power is accompanied by fights for public power in places as far flung as Ann Arbor, Michigan; Clearwater, Florida; and Tucson. Last month, a financial feasibility study found that power customers in New York’s Hudson Valley would save money right away by converting their private utility to a locally controlled public power authority. At a moment in which climate action and our political institutions are under full-frontal assault at the national level, We Power is one of many fights to build democratic and sustainable utilities.
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More Americans Fall Behind on Utility Bills as AI Data Centers, Trump Attacks on Renewables Raise Costs
"It’s hard to see utility bills coming down in this decade," said one industry analyst.
Nov 17, 2025
Although the rising cost of groceries has gotten a lot of attention in recent weeks, US consumers are also increasingly under pressure from the rising cost of electricity.
A new report from researchers at The Century Foundation and financial abuse watchdog Protect Borrowers has found that the average overdue balance on utility bills has surged by 32% over the last three years, going from $597 in 2022 to $789 in 2025. What's more, the report estimates that roughly 1 out of every 20 US households has utility debt that is "so severe it was sent to collections or in arrears."
The increase in overdue utility bill debt has come at a time when electricity costs have been growing significantly faster than the overall rate of inflation, the organizations found.
"Comparing twelve-month moving averages from March 2022 to June 2025 (to adjust for seasonality), monthly energy costs... nationwide rose from $196 to $265—a 35% jump, or nearly three times overall inflation during that period," noted the report.
The organizations said that the reasons for these price increases are complicated, although factors include "poorly regulated monopolies overcharging customers to the tune of $5 billion a year," as well as the explosion in the construction of energy-devouring artificial intelligence data centers and the Trump administration's attacks on renewable energy projects that began under former President Joe Biden's administration.
AI data center construction has become a major controversy in communities across the US, and a CNBC analysis published late last week found that "in at least three states with high concentrations of data centers," electric bills have grown "much faster than the national average" over the last year.
Virginia, which has the highest concentration of AI data centers in the country, saw electricity prices surge by 13% over the last year, while data center-heavy states such as Illinois and Ohio saw electricity costs go up by 16% and 12%, respectively.
Rob Gramlich, president of power sector consulting firm Grid Strategies, told CNBC that the massive growth in data centers means that "it’s hard to see utility bills coming down in this decade."
The Century Foundation and Protect Borrowers conclude that their report paints "a grim picture" of "increasing energy prices, rising overdue balances, and squeezed household budgets that together are pushing families deeper and deeper into debt."
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Mamdani’s Win and the Price of Urban Life: Why City Voters Are Seeking Change
The soaring costs of city life appear to be sending urban voters toward progressive leaders who promise relief, both in the US and globally.
Nov 06, 2025
From New York to California and beyond, soaring costs seem to be rewriting city politics, as voters respond to candidates who promise to ease the financial squeeze. Zohran Mamdani’s historic win in NYC underscores a shift that has been emerging in recent years—both in the US and globally—and could extend to other major cities.
For example, in Boston, progressive Democrat Michelle Wu, elected in 2021, ran on making city life more affordable with expanded tenant protections, investments in housing, and childcare support. Her most prominent challenger, Josh Kraft, son of Forbes 400 billionaire Robert Kraft, flamed out even before the election. Out west, Oakland’s progressive Democrat Barbara Lee, elected in 2025, focused on tackling homelessness and making housing and daycare more accessible for families. And in Chicago, democratic socialist Brandon Johnson, who took office in 2023, campaigned on “Green Social Housing” and other programs to lower living costs for working families.
Across these cities, the math is clear: When basic necessities like housing, childcare, and utility costs reach stratospheric levels, voters turn to leaders who offer solutions. These mayoral victories reflect the economic pressures impacting urban life and show why cost-of-living issues are now a defining feature of city politics.
Let’s take a look at how these four cities—New York, Boston, Oakland, and Chicago—stack up in terms of costs.
When a One-Bedroom Costs a Fortune
Across the US, if you’re renting a one‑bedroom apartment, you’re looking at spending about $1,495 a month as of October 2025.
But if you happen to live in one of the country’s pricier cities, that number skyrockets fast. In New York City, a simple one‑bedroom will set you back around $4,026 per month, almost three times the national average. Boston renters face similarly steep costs—one‑bedroom apartments in the city average about $3,455 per month. Over in Oakland, it’s about $2,090 per month, and Chicago clocks in at roughly $1,893 per month.
The point is clear: If you’re renting in America’s major cities, you’re paying beyond what most renters pay across the country, and that housing squeeze helps explain why affordability is a defining issue in urban politics right now.
When Daycare Drains Your Wallet
For parents juggling work and childcare, the national average cost of full-time daycare comes in at roughly $1,039 a month. In major cities where cost of living is high, that number climbs dramatically.
In New York City, center‑based care costs about $26,000 a year on average, which works out to about $2,167 per month. In Boston, families can expect rates around $2,856 per month for about 130 hours of care. In Oakland, the cost for full-day care for children above 36 months is approximately $2,600 per month in many centers. And in Chicago, estimates for full-day daycare center-based care hover in the ballpark of $2,300 per month.
It’s no surprise that voters in these cities are drawn to mayoral candidates who talk seriously about childcare. When daycare alone can eat up a significant portion of a family’s monthly budget, affordability quickly becomes a top political issue.
Basic Services Break the Budget
Nationally, households in the 50 largest metro areas spend about $310 a month on utilities (electricity, gas, heating, water). But in these cities, utility costs blow past the national average, adding another layer of financial pressure for residents.
In New York City, the average monthly utility bill comes in at roughly $571. Meanwhile, in Boston residents pay around $443 a month for utilities. In the Bay Area, the average bill in Oakland comes in at about $342 a month, which is lower than New York and Boston but still higher than in many parts of the country. Chicago households report average monthly utility bills of approximately $352.
Bottom line: If you live in one of those big‑city hubs, utility bills are another piece of the affordability puzzle that voters in these cities are increasingly factoring into who they elect to lead.
Affordability is the New Political Pulse
Rising prices are taking center stage in urban politics, affecting election outcomes and pointing to a growing trend in city governance. Mamdani’s upset in New York is already sending ripples across the country, giving a boost to candidates with progressive or democratic-socialist platforms.
In Minneapolis, state senator Omar Fateh, a progressive Democrat and longtime advocate for renter protections, ran for mayor on a platform focused on affordable housing and expanded public services. In Seattle, activist Katie Wilson, also aligned with the city’s progressive wing, is challenging incumbent Bruce Harrell, centering her campaign on housing, public transit, and the broader cost-of-living crunch.
And this trend isn’t just an American story:rising urban costs show up in political trends worldwide.
Consider Vienna, Austria. Mayor Michael Ludwig, a Social Democrat, has been at the helm since 2018, reinforcing the city’s storied social-housing tradition (which the New York Times called a “renter’s utopia”). Roughly 60% of residents live in subsidized or publicly-owned apartments, while the city continues to invest heavily in childcare and energy-efficient infrastructure. The result is a model of urban living where the cost of everyday life is more manageable.
Copenhagen, Denmark, under Mayor Sophie Hæstorp Andersen of the Social Democrats from 2021 to 2024, similarly emphasizes public housing, affordable early childhood education, and green-energy initiatives to keep city life manageable. And in Barcelona, Spain, Mayor Ada Colau of the leftist Barcelona en Comú party, led from 2015 to 2023, expanding affordable housing, rent controls, and social services.
The economy of the city is pretty much the politics of the city. Zohranomics is essentially urbanomics: the politics of affordability, writ large across city streets. In expensive urban areas, the numbers aren’t abstract, they’re votes. And as the pressures of urban life mount, politics increasingly follows the bottom line.
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Make Polluters Pay for the Poles and Wires
The companies that made billions selling the fuels that destabilized the climate can afford to help fix the grid that’s collapsing under it.
Oct 29, 2025
We talk a lot about the cost of energy, but not enough about what’s actually driving it. Across the country, electricity bills are climbing not because of regulation, as the industry claims, but because of the growing costs of the climate crisis itself. The storms, the fires, the floods, and the heat are battering an electric grid that was mostly built half a century ago, and the costs of repairing it are being quietly folded into our monthly bills.
The other side wants you to believe it’s “climate” that’s driving up prices, and they’re right, just not in the way that they mean. It isn’t climate mandates or clean-energy standards. It’s climate disasters. And the truth is, the fastest way to lower costs isn’t to slow down the energy transition, it’s to speed it up. Clean energy brings cheap, reliable power online faster and protects families from the kind of fuel price spikes that come with oil and gas dependence.
That’s where climate superfund laws come in. New York and Vermont have already passed versions that require the biggest polluters to chip in for climate damage. These laws follow the same principle that governs toxic-waste cleanup. If you made the mess, you help pay to clean it up. States are starting to realize that the funds from a climate superfund could cover part of the cost of hardening the grid, things like replacing wooden poles with steel, elevating substations that flood every few years, building microgrids so hospitals and schools can stay open during blackouts, and funding new and more reliable clean energy projects. These projects would help to ease the pressure on ratepayers while making the systems themselves more resilient.
For years, utilities and regulators treated big storms as one-off emergencies. A few poles went down, they rebuilt them, everyone moved on. But the “one-off” has now become, dare I say, the “new normal.” In Maine, the cost of storm recovery has risen more than 30 fold since 2020. Every time a nor’easter slams through the state, Central Maine Power spends millions to replace equipment and clear lines, and then regulators approve a new rider or adjustment that gets added to customer bills. It’s the same story across the country.
The next time a storm knocks out your power or a bill arrives higher than expected, that’s the climate crisis arriving as a tab in your mailbox.
In California, billions have gone toward wildfire mitigation after blazes sparked by utility equipment destroyed entire towns. To prevent future fires, power companies are burying lines, trimming trees, insulating wires—all necessary, and all very, very expensive. According to state filings, utilities’ wildfire-related costs are contributing to 7-12% bill increases for residential customers. What began as infrequent emergency response spending has become a permanent part of doing business for utility companies across the country.
A new national analysis from the Center for American Progress and the Natural Resources Defense Council shows how big this problem has gotten. Utilities in 49 states and Washington, DC have already raised rates or proposed to raise within the next two years. By 2028, those hikes will add nearly $90 billion to household energy bills. That’s billions with a b. And for many families, that means another $30 or $40 a month on top of everything else they’re already struggling to afford.
The reasons are tangled together. The grid is old and failing faster under stress. The price of natural gas has spiked again, partly because exports of natural gas have linked American prices to volatile global markets. And new power-hungry data centers are popping up so quickly that utilities are scrambling to build the power plants to feed them. But one of the biggest single drivers remains extreme weather. Each storm and heatwave adds another layer of cost to a grid that was never built for this world.
The Government Accountability Office has warned that climate change will stress every part of the energy system and that failing to adapt will cost billions of dollars more in the long run. Yet the way we pay for that adaptation hasn’t changed at all. Utilities rebuild, regulators sign off, and the public pays. Fossil-fuel companies whose emissions are fueling the disasters that make all this necessary contribute all of nothing.
It’s tempting to think of this as just another utility issue, a problem for regulators and accountants and not us. But to me, it’s really a measure of how far the climate crisis has crept into our daily life. The next time a storm knocks out your power or a bill arrives higher than expected, that’s the climate crisis arriving as a tab in your mailbox. We can keep pretending it’s inevitable, or we can start sending the bill to the companies that profited from creating the problem.
Climate superfunds won’t solve everything. But they’d at least start to balance the scales. The companies that made billions selling the fuels that destabilized the climate can afford to help fix the grid that’s collapsing under it.
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How to Make Sure People and the Planet Don’t Pay for the Data Center Buildout
Decision-makers must do their due diligence to prioritize the needs of a community before the needs of a data center.
Jul 24, 2025
Data centers—the places used to host servers and computers that are needed to process various IT tasks like AI queries—are booming. And the corporations that build them want a lot more land and a lot more power to make them run. These plans continue to grow in scale, and there are no signs of a slow-down.
So, how much energy will data centers need in the future? Nobody is 100% sure, but some experts estimate it could nearly triple in just 5 years, with data centers representing up to 12% of total U.S. electricity consumption in 2028, up from 4.4% in 2023.
Greed Is Fueling Short-Sighted Policies
U.S. President Donald Trump’s Department of Energy has put forth its own forecasts in a recently-published report on resource adequacy and grid reliance, which looked at multiple sources to arrive at a midpoint estimate of around 50 gigawatts (GW) of new load additions needed to meet data center energy demand. Unfortunately, the report uses flawed assumptions that greatly exaggerate projected load growth and retirements of existing fossil plants, while significantly underestimating plans to add new cleaner generation to address potential reliability concerns. This type of misleading, fossil-fuel-friendly narrative is not new for Donald Trump and his administration. This past Independence Day, he signed the reconciliation bill into law, followed by an executive order that promise devastating impacts for the future of clean and affordable energy.
Politics matter here because they set the rules of the game. Without regard for our climate or health at the highest levels of government, data center developers are happily jumping at the chance to meet the energy needs of their facilities with new gas, nuclear, or even proposing to bypass utilities altogether in order to quickly connect to the grid. Despite claims that fossil fuels are needed to keep the lights on, our analysis has shown that it’s actually renewables that support a more resilient grid.
Utilities play a role in this too, of course. In states like Wisconsin, where various data centers have been proposed, utilities are throwing new gas plants at the problem in a poorly planned attempt to keep up with energy demand predictions. They have failed to understand the paradigm shift that load growth from data centers represents, and are instead attempting to solve new problems with old tools.
So much of this reliance on methane gas hinges on corporations following through on their data center plans (which seems antithetical to maintaining commitments to reducing greenhouse gas emissions that many of these companies still hold). But who pays for all this gas infrastructure? And what other risks and costs can we expect if plans fall apart as quickly as they came together?
Ratepayers Bear the True Risk of Fossil Fuel-Powered Data Centers
Utilities are allowed to recover costs and rake in profit via customers’ bills when building new infrastructure like gas-fired generation facilities. This puts ratepayers on the line financially for utilities’ short-sighted decisions, which are often lacking in transparency.
A report from Harvard Law experts recently identified subtle ways in which the costs of data centers are shifted to ratepayers through mechanisms like special contracts, which are offered to big customers by utilities in the form of unique and negotiated rates, but which risk cost recovery shortfalls that all other ratepayers have to later subsidize via higher bills. In other words, utilities cut deals for data centers which increase everyone else’s bills.
Additionally, when data center growth triggers the need for investment in the transmission system, those costs may also get passed down to ratepayers unless state regulators intervene.
The problem isn’t just data centers—it’s what’s powering them, and that dirty power is costly in so many ways.
In short, there are a number of ways in which our current approach to regulating energy systems is not structured to protect ratepayers in the face of this fast-paced tech boom. Profit-driven policies that benefit the already rich, along with little to no transparency into the weedy details of who pays for what, make for a dense and unforgiving mountain of obstacles in the way of an equitable energy future.
But the problem isn’t just data centers—it’s what’s powering them, and that dirty power is costly in so many ways.
A Wisconsin utility got approval to build two gas-fired plants, priced at $1.2 billion and $280 million, which will be repaid through charges added to customers’ electricity bills for the lifetime of the plants. Beyond this upfront cost lies a set of costs that doesn’t often get factored in. RMI, a non-profit focusing on energy systems, argues that the increased reliance on fossil gas brings additional cost risks from bottlenecks in supply of both gas and equipment that are borne by consumers. If these plants turn out to be obsolescent (due to overestimates of load growth or cheaper wind and solar power, for example), the utility’s customers will still have to pay all the utility’s stranded costs.
In addition to this are environmental costs of data centers and the huge health impact costs that come as a result of gas plant pollution.
A massive construction price tag, the costly risks of stranded assets, and the health-related expenses associated with just this one example in Wisconsin should give us pause.
Make Data Centers Pay Their Fair Share
In many places we’re seeing the ways in which policy and regulation is attempting to keep up with ‘Big Data Center’ plans. There is wide recognition that the solutions must include ratepayer protections. Namely, implementing policies that direct large electricity users like data centers to pay for any incremental grid infrastructure and operating costs needed to meet their power demand.
Policymakers and regulators, as well as utilities themselves, have proposed plans to create unique electricity rate structures, or tariffs, for large users. What that means is a big electricity user such as a data center would be subject to rates, terms, and conditions that are more appropriate to how they use energy and their impact on the grid. Even when utilities do initiate a plan like this, stakeholder engagement is crucial to ensuring that protections for ratepayers are well thought out. Requests for contested cases at the regulatory level, such as this one from the Citizens Utility Board of Wisconsin (CUB), allow for a more transparent process that keeps utilities accountable to their customers.
In Oregon, the state legislature passed a bill called the POWER Act, which shifts the infrastructure and service costs associated with rapid load growth to large users. It also includes language requiring data centers to sign long-term payment contracts with their respective electric utilities in order to decrease the risk of data center project developers ducking out early, creating stranded assets, and forcing others to foot the bill of new investments that ultimately aren’t needed.
These democratic processes play an important role in achieving fair and just rules, especially when we remember that this rapid growth in large data centers is unprecedented, speculative, and that the uncertain future of this technology puts those responsible for planning around their energy needs in a complicated position. Utility costs have long been assigned to the customers that cause those costs, at least in theory.
Say ‘No’ to Dirty Data
This trend in planning for proactive rates and contracts for new data center demand is encouraging because it acknowledges that most energy customers are not massive corporations seeking to ride the next big tech breakthrough to profits. Utilities and regulators must also provide stakeholders with transparent information on data center energy and water usage so that ratepayer advocacy can be informed by the most accurate and up-to-date information.
And let’s not forget that at the crux of this conversation lies a critical issue that we previously discussed: the steep cost of using fossil fuels, like gas and coal, to power data centers. There are certain costs that most tariffs don’t cover, including damage to our health due to polluted air, continued overreliance on unreliable sources of energy, and a price too high to conceive at the expense of our planet and future generations.
Ratepayers should not bear the burden of hosting dirty gas plants that put their health at risk, nor should they be responsible for paying higher energy costs to meet data center demand.
In Michigan, stakeholder groups are petitioning for regulations (using the contested case mechanism that I mentioned earlier) that would direct utilities to give priority within data center interconnection requests to those with clean energy plans. Other recommendations from stakeholders include transparent reporting and guidelines for keeping these data centers accountable for their clean energy promises. For a more detailed explanation of these efforts in Michigan, check out this blog from my colleague, Lee Shaver.
Minnesota, meanwhile, passed a bill last month that resulted in mixed feelings for many. The legislature extended tax breaks to 2,042 for data centers in the state, which would benefit big developers and likely bring more projects to the state. However, the bill also revoked a tax exemption on electricity bills, making data centers more accountable for their energy use. Utilities will also be prevented from passing on these costs to their other customers or avoiding the state’s 100% clean electricity mandate. Not only that, but a new data center fee was introduced that would direct funding toward weatherization programs for low-income residents to make energy-efficient upgrades. The bill did fall short on robust commitments to issues like natural resource protections.
People-First Solutions
There doesn’t seem to be a singular right way through these challenges (see Elon Musk’s xAI project in Memphis for an example of the wrong way), but some guiding principles might help:
- Decision-makers must do their due diligence to prioritize the needs of a community before the needs of a data center. The benefits of economic growth should be distributed through equitable and just channels.
- Ratepayers should not bear the burden of hosting dirty gas plants that put their health at risk, nor should they be responsible for paying higher energy costs to meet data center demand.
- Utilities must prioritize the use of renewables, efficiency, energy storage, and other grid-supporting technologies to meet new demand, relying on viable and adaptable long-term planning rather than an arbitrary urgency that risks further overreliance on fossil fuels.
- Utility plans and data center information should be made accessible and transparent to the public, including any grid impacts resulting from data center energy demand.
The cost of doing business with dirty fossil fuels isn’t worth it. The fight to put people over profits always is.
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As Heatwave Cooks US, 150+ Groups Urge Leaders to Ban Deadly Utility Shutoffs
"Millions of lives are at risk this week as extreme heat scorches our country," said one campaigner. "Trump and his billionaire buddies will have blood on their hands."
Jun 24, 2025
With extreme temperatures fueled by human-caused global heating gripping much of the United States, a coalition of more than 150 advocacy groups on Tuesday urged federal, state, and local elected leaders to ban potentially deadly utility disconnections, increase worker protections, and tax polluters to finance renewable energy.
The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) led two letters—one to Democratic congressional leaders and another to governors and mayors—arguing that U.S. President Donald Trump "has put millions of lives at risk by dismantling federal agencies and lifesaving programs that help working families keep their homes cool and survive deadly heatwaves like the one this week."
"Since taking office Trump has stripped Americans of access to lifesaving measures, including the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program and Low-Income Household Water Assistance Program, which help more than 8 million working families pay their utility bills," CBD noted.
"Every day of extreme heat in the United States claims about 154 lives."
The Trump administration has also laid off staff at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, "crippling the agency's ability to help communities before and after disaster strikes. And the country's first-ever proposed federal heat standard, which would prevent heat-related illness and injury in workplaces, is stalled after staff cuts at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration."
CBD said that extreme heat is the deadliest weather-related phenomenon, "claiming more lives each year than hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods combined."
"Every day of extreme heat in the United States claims about 154 lives," the group added. "In the past seven years there has been a nearly 17% increase each year in heat-related deaths. Among those most harmed by extreme heat are outdoor workers and children."
The diverse groups signing the letter—which include Climate Justice Alliance, Food & Water Watch, Free Press Action, Friends of the Earth U.S., Sunrise Movement, and Utility Workers Union of America—centered the voices of people who are most vulnerable to exposure to extreme heat, including outdoor workers like José, a Florida roofer.
"I've felt dizzy, weak, unable to breathe, with cramps, and my heart beats very fast, desperate," the 24-year-old said. "The heat suffocates me and many times I've been close to going to the hospital. While working on the roofs, it feels like the heat is over 110°F or 115°F and we only take one or two short breaks. I need this work to survive, but as the summers get hotter, I worry that one day I will collapse."
CBD senior attorney and energy justice program director Jean Su said in a statement Tuesday that "millions of lives are at risk this week as extreme heat scorches our country. Trump and his billionaire buddies will have blood on their hands."
"Corporations are taking advantage of working people and stripping them of access to lifesaving utilities, clean water, and a safe and resilient future," Su added. "Congress and especially state leaders must deliver emergency relief and tax greedy polluters who are endangering our lives and the climate. Everyone deserves heat-resilient homes, schools, and workplaces."
Will Humble, executive director of letter signatory Arizona Public Health Association, said: "We're not asking for the moon here. We're just looking for state and federal officials to help keep people alive during the summertime."
"Heat kills as many people in Arizona as influenza and pneumonia, and every one of those heat deaths is preventable," Humble added. "The least our elected officials can do is make sure people have places of refuge from these deadly fossil fuel-driven heatwaves. We also need stronger limits on summertime electricity shutoffs, so people aren't dying because the utility company has turned off their power."
"We're just looking for state and federal officials to help keep people alive during the summertime."
Last week, Oregon became the latest of more than two dozen states to ban power disconnections during high summer heat. However, as CBD and others have noted, utilities still find ways to shut off utilities during hot periods.
Six major investor-owned utilities—Georgia Power, DTE Energy, Duke Energy, Ameren Corporation, Pacific Gas & Electric, and Arizona Public Service—"shut off power to households at least 400,000 times during the summertime," according to a CBD report published in January. Those six utilities raked in $10 billion in profits while collectively hiking their customers' rates by at least $3.5 billion since 2023.
"Mayors and governors must act now with bold, local solutions, including expanded public transit and community-centered strategies like neighborhood cooling hubs," Climate Justice Alliance executive director KD Chavez said in a statement. "We also urge stronger labor protections, including municipal and state-level heat standards, to protect postal workers, farmworkers, and all outdoor workers who are increasingly exposed to deadly heat without adequate safeguards."
"Extreme heat has been endangering communities across the country," Chavez added. "We're feeling it closely this week and know it will only get worse. Our growing dependence on aging buildings, air conditioning and a fragile, fossil fuel-dependent power grid is putting lives at risk, especially in frontline, low-income neighborhoods and U.S. territories without government representation."
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Professional Sports Leagues Drop the Ball on Climate Crisis
Big banks, oil giants, and powerful utility companies sponsor pro sports teams and leagues to protect what social scientists call their “social license” by assuring fans that they are public-spirited, good corporate citizens. But they are not that.
Oct 23, 2024
In September, North American professional sports leagues had the opportunity to demonstrate their commitment to protecting the planet during a joint panel at Climate Week NYC, the annual affair cosponsored by the United Nations featuring hundreds of events feting local, national and international efforts to address climate change.
They dropped the ball.
Just three months earlier, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres castigated coal, oil and gas companies—which he dubbed the “godfathers of climate chaos”—for spreading disinformation and called for a worldwide ban on fossil fuel advertising. Until that happens, Guterres urged ad agencies to refuse fossil fuel clients and companies to stop taking their ads.
The leagues apparently didn’t get the memo. During their panel discussion, titled Major League Greening, representatives from pro baseball (MLB), basketball (NBA) and hockey mainly talked about their long-term goals to shrink their carbon footprint and, to be sure, they have come a long way since I wrote about their initial efforts to reduce their energy, water and paper use back in 2012. They also talked about their budding alliances with climate solution experts. But there was no talk of cutting their commercial ties with the very companies that are largely responsible for the climate crisis.
A recent survey of pro baseball, basketball, football, hockey and soccer leagues by UCLA’s Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment found that they collectively have more than 60 sponsorship deals with three dozen oil companies and utilities that burn fossil fuels or distribute fossil gas. Depending on the deal, the companies get prominently placed billboards in team facilities, logos on team uniforms, partnerships with team community programs, or—if they spend some serious money—stadium naming rights.
Eight of the oil and utility companies identified by the UCLA survey—Chevron, Entergy, ExxonMobil, Marathon Petroleum, NextEra Energy, NRG Energy, Phillips 66 and Xcel Energy—are among the top 25 U.S. carbon polluters. Four of those companies—Chevron, ExxonMobil, Marathon Petroleum and Phillips 66—along with four other companies with sports sponsorships—ConocoPhillips, Hess, Occidental Petroleum and Shell—have been sued by state and local governments across the United States for climate change-related damage and their decades of deception, which has served to delay the necessary transition to clean energy. ExxonMobil is a defendant in all 39 lawsuits, Chevron has been cited in 28, and Phillips 66 has been named in 21.
Banks that are still investing tens of billions of dollars annually in fossil fuel projects also have sponsorship deals with pro sports teams. Besides routine billboard deals, six of the 12 largest fossil fuel investors since the Paris climate agreement was signed in 2016—Bank of America, Barclays, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Scotiabank and Wells Fargo—are all spending a small fortune on facility naming rights.
Corporations sponsor sports for two main reasons: to build public trust and increase exposure. According to a 2021 Nielsen “Trust in Advertising” study, 81 percent of consumers completely or somewhat trust brands that sponsor sport teams, second only to the trust they have for friends and family. By sponsoring a team, corporations increase the chance that fans will form the same emotional connection they have with the team with their brand, especially when fans see it repeatedly during a game and over a season. Jersey patches, which the NBA approved in 2017 and MLB approved last year, especially attract attention. Nielsen estimates that the average value of the live broadcast exposure a baseball patch sponsor would receive over a full regular season would exceed $12.4 million.
Another rationale for banks and oil and utility companies for sponsoring pro sports is to protect what social scientists call their “social license” by assuring fans that they are public-spirited, good corporate citizens. Critics call it “sportswashing”—using sports to burnish a reputation tarnished by wrongdoing, in this case, endangering public health and the environment.
Fans of the two baseball teams that battled it out in this year’s National League Championship Series are crying foul, but thus far have been ignored.
In March 2023, environmental activists joined New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams to urge the Mets to change the name of Citi Field because Citibank’s parent company Citigroup has invested $396 billion in fossil fuel projects since 2016, second only to JPMorgan Chase’s $430 billion. “Citi doesn’t represent the values of Mets fans or NYC,” Williams wrote in a tweet. “If they refuse to end their toxic relationship with fossil fuels, the Mets should end their partnership with Citi.”
More recently, more than 80 public interest groups, scientists and environmental advocates signed an open letter calling on the Dodgers to cut its ties to Phillips 66, owner of the Union 76 gas station chain. “Using tactics such as associating a beloved, trusted brand like the Dodgers with enterprises like [Union] 76,” the letter states, “the fossil fuel industry has reinforced deceitful messages that ‘oil is our friend,’ and that ‘climate change isn’t so bad.’” Since August, nearly 22,800 people have signed the letter, which urges the team to end its sponsorship deal with the oil company “immediately.”
Unlike the North American pro sports leagues, advertising and public relations agencies worldwide are heeding U.N. Secretary-General Guterres’s call. More than a thousand have pledged to refuse working for fossil fuel companies, their trade associations, and their front groups. If the leagues were serious about sustainability, they likewise would sever their relationships with the godfathers of climate chaos and the banks that enable them.
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Oregon County Files First-Ever Climate Deception Lawsuit Against Gas Utility
"Gas utilities have been significant players in the historic and ongoing deception campaigns to mislead the public about the dangers of fossil fuels."
Oct 08, 2024
Multnomah County in Oregon on Monday added NW Natural to the list of defendants in its climate deception lawsuit, making the company the first-ever gas utility to face a climate lawsuit.
The county, which encompasses Portland, sued an array of fossil fuel interests last year for deceiving the public about the dangers of their products. It's one of dozens of climate lawsuits municipalities and states around the United States have filed in recent years in a bid to hold the Big Oil accountable. None have yet reached a trial.
The Multnomah County lawsuit is unique in that it seeks damages for a specific extreme weather event: the heat dome that covered Portland in 2021, killing at least 69. The county seeks $50 million in damages for the heat dome, $1.5 billion for future damages, and $50 billion for climate adaptation.
"It is our purpose to hold accountable all of the companies that we allege engaged in wrongdoing associated with carbon pollution that has so negatively affected climate," Jeffrey Simon, co-lead counsel for Multnomah County, told OPB following the revision to the list of defendants.
Notorious greenwasher and climate villain NW Natural is the first US gas utility to be sued in a climate accountability lawsuit.
The company accounts for 9% of Oregon's greenhouse gas emissions.
Thank you to @multco for holding polluters accountable. https://t.co/qWgmXQKWW0
— Breach Collective (@breachcollectiv) October 8, 2024
The lawsuit now names 24 defendants, 13 of which are oil and gas companies. The county also on Monday added the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine to the list.
A federal judge ruled in June that the case could proceed in Oregon state court—a loss for Big Oil, which had sought to move it to federal court.
Experts said the move to include NW Natural in the case could be the start of a movement to hold utilities accountable for their role in the fossil fuel economy and for deceiving the public about natural gas.
"Gas utilities have been significant players in the historic and ongoing deception campaigns to mislead the public about the dangers of fossil fuels," Alyssa Johl, general counsel at the Center for Climate Integrity, said in a statement. "NW Natural is now the first to be named as a defendant in a climate deception lawsuit, but it likely won't be the last."
"Gas utilities have known for decades that their products fuel the climate crisis, yet they continue to deceptively market methane gas as a climate solution," she added.
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