Oklahoma’s governor, Kevin Stitt, has signed into law a new bill aimed at protecting ratepayers in the state from rising utility and infrastructure costs associated with data centers.

The bill was proposed by Representative Brad Boles, a Republican representing Marlow, on January 3, 2026. The bill is expected to come into force in July.

It requires data centers to pay their share of infrastructure costs rather than passing them on to residential and small-business ratepayers. It defines "large load customers" as new facilities adding 75MW or more of demand and covers regular data centers, cryptocurrency mining operations, and AI facilities.

The bill passed unanimously in both House committees before moving to the Senate, where it was amended to add 60-day advance notice requirements and public meetings before land purchases for large projects. The Senate passed the final version 46–0.

“It passed unanimously in the House and Senate. You don’t see that happen very often and I think that’s because the people in our districts who have reached out to us in the past year,” said Boles.

Boles went on to claim that Oklahoma lawmakers are likely only at the beginning of broader conversations surrounding data centers.

“Three years ago, we weren’t talking about data centers at all,” Boles said. “So I could see each year the legislature coming in and maybe there’s issues we weren’t aware of this year or we continue to build off what we did this year.”

At present, there are further legislative packages moving through the state legislature focused on water usage that would require certain data centers that use groundwater cooling systems to use closed-loop cooling technology in an effort to reduce local water impacts.

Oklahoma is the latest US state to enact a ratepayer protection bill. Last week, the Florida governor signed into law a similar bill which prohibited utilities from passing data center infrastructure costs on to residential and small-business ratepayers and requiring large-scale users to bear their full cost of service.