Today, U.S. Representative Rick Larsen (WA-02) released the following statement after the House of Representatives voted to pass the Ratepayers Protection Act 417 to 3.
“I voted for the Ratepayers Protection Act to protect families from higher electric bills,” said Rep. Larsen. “This legislation is only a start, and there is a lot more work to do. I support tough, upfront restrictions on large data centers: no high electric bills for local families and small businesses, no federal tax breaks, and no construction without community approval and union labor. Data centers must pay their fair share to connect to and use the grid, and they should be required to use closed loop water systems. I support the ability of local jurisdictions to enact temporary moratoriums to give themselves time to decide how they want to manage large data centers.”
The Ratepayer Protection Act requires state regulators to consider directing data centers to pay the full cost of connection to the grid, protecting ratepayers from footing the bill for data centers’ power consumption. In 2024, the Department of Energy projected that the percentage of U.S. electricity demand from data centers could grow from 4.4 percent in 2023 to 12 percent by 2028.
Rep. Larsen also cosponsors the Big Ugly Tax Breaks for Data Centers Act to roll back tax breaks for large AI data centers in Republicans’ Big Ugly Law.
