- 417-3 vote sends bill to Senate
- Data centers required to cover new grid costs under the legislation
- AI-driven demand fuels bipartisan urgency
The House voted 417-3 to pass the Ratepayer Protection Act, a bipartisan measure aimed at preventing utility customers from absorbing the electricity costs tied to the country’s data center buildout, CBS News said Wednesday.
Reps. Gabe Evans, R-Colo., and Kathy Castor, D-Fla., led the bill, which cleared under a fast-tracked process requiring two-thirds support. Only three progressive Democrats voted against it, while every Republican present backed the measure. It now moves to the Senate.
The vote lands just ahead of the Potomac Officers Club’s 2026 FedCiv Summit on Oct. 29, where Department of Energy Chief Information Officer and 2026 Wash100 winner Dawn Zimmer will deliver a keynote. As DOE’s CIO, Zimmer sits at the intersection of federal technology strategy and the grid-capacity pressures now driving congressional action, making her keynote timely context for GovCon leaders tracking this issue. Don’t miss her enlightening remarks and Q&A session!
What Does the Ratepayer Protection Act Require?
The Ratepayer Protection Act would encourage state utility regulators to adopt standards ensuring “large-load customers” — including large-scale data centers — pay the full cost of new electricity generation and transmission capacity built to serve them, rather than spreading those costs across residential and small-business ratepayers. The bill does not mandate adoption of the standard; it directs states to weigh it.
The legislation responds to mounting concern that AI-driven data center growth is outpacing the power grid’s capacity. The International Energy Agency has projected that U.S. data center electricity consumption could more than double from 2024 levels by the end of the decade, and other analyses estimate the facilities could account for more than 10 percent of national power demand by 2030.
What Were Lawmakers’ Perspectives on the Ratepayer Protection Act?
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., framed the bill as a check on the AI industry’s obligations to the communities hosting its infrastructure.
“AI companies have a serious responsibility to earn the trust of the communities they invest in and to be good neighbors,” Johnson said in a statement Wednesday night, adding that the act “guarantees hardworking American families won’t foot the bill for the buildout of AI infrastructure.”
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., who pushed for the bill’s passage, said the legislation “takes action on behalf of our constituents so we may keep costs low while ensuring the U.S. leads in the next-generation economy.”
Democrats offered qualified support. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., called the bill “a step forward” while arguing more action is needed, and Energy and Commerce ranking member Frank Pallone, D-N.J., described it as “imperfect” but “not the end of our focus on these issues.”
The vote follows a White House push earlier this year for data center developers to sign a pledge committing to build or purchase their own power supply, which administration officials say hundreds of utilities and dozens of AI companies and data center operators have joined. In the Senate, Energy and Natural Resources Committee ranking member Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., has already raised doubts about the Ratepayer Protection Act, calling its framework “basically a voluntary structure.”
