Communities need transparency, negotiation assistance, and resource impact tracking
This week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Ratepayer Protection Act, the Load Forecasting Enhancement Act, and the High-Capacity Grid Act. The bills reflect an important first step towards addressing utility costs for customers, accurate energy forecasting, and grid reliability. ARI applauded their passage and called for additional action to address Americans’ growing concerns over data centers.
“These bills are a strong first step to ensuring Americans do not bear the cost of data center growth in their neighborhoods, and we applaud the bipartisan effort to tackle this problem,” said Brad Carson, President of Americans for Responsible Innovation. “But Congress cannot stop here. Communities need more insight into tax breaks granted to developers and the impacts data centers will have on their everyday lives, as well as the resources to place state and local leaders on equal footing with hyperscalers. Congress must require that data centers disclose their electricity usage and put a stop to the NDAs that keep communities in the dark about how deals are made. We need to give Americans visibility into local data center projects from start to finish.”
According to recent polling, communities are worried about data centers’ quality-of-life impacts, obscure development deals, hidden taxpayer subsidies, natural resource use, and insufficient opportunities for public input. A well-rounded data center package is necessary to address all facets of this complex issue.
ARI released its white paper, Information is Power: The Case for Data Center Transparency, on the information gap created by insufficient data center energy consumption reporting. The paper calls for Congress to mandate the Energy Information Administration (EIA) to collect energy use information from data centers, obtaining data that grid planners need.
As public concern around data centers grows, ARI recently hosted Terms of Service: Community Stewardship in the Data Center Era. The panel, which featured state and local officials from across the country, made it clear that Americans want transparency from data center developers.
###