Three Democratic US senators said they are investigating whether the data center boom is causing electricity prices to rise.

Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said that they had written to the largest data center companies to understand the industry's impact on local communities.

The politicians said that they were alarmed by reports that data centers had caused bills to "skyrocket," claiming regions with significant buildout had seen costs go up by as much as 267 percent over five years.

The Energy Information Administration reports that prices across the country have gone up by 25 percent from 2020 to 2024 (this year's data is not yet available) on average, amid inflation and upgrades to the grid.

The senators sent letters to Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, CoreWeave, Digital Realty, and Equinix demanding more transparency.

“Tech companies have paid lip service in support of covering their data centers’ energy costs, but their actions have shown the opposite," they said.

"And on top of failing to pay their fair share of their electricity rates, tech companies regularly hide as much information as possible from the communities in which their data centers will be built. To protect consumers, data centers must pay a greater share of the costs upfront for future energy usage and updates to the electrical grid provided specifically to accommodate data centers’ energy needs.”

They claimed: “Through these utility price increases, American families bankroll the electricity costs of trillion-dollar tech companies.”

The senators have requested that the companies respond by January 12, 2026.

The impact of data centers on local costs is a hotly debated topic, without a simple answer. Different locations require varying levels of grid upgrades, and who pays for those upgrades can depend on the project and regional laws and regulations.

In Texas, this June saw the state mandate that large load customers like data centers contribute to interconnection costs. The next month, Ohio regulators voted to require data centers to pay at least 85 percent of power costs, even if they do not use the power.

In Wisconsin, developer Vantage said that it will underwrite 100 percent of the power infrastructure investment required for an OpenAI Stargate data center with a dedicated electricity rate from utility We Energies.

Amazon has made an even bolder claim about its projects. An Amazon-funded report this week said that Amazon data centers are generating enough revenue to cover their costs and, in some cases, are even driving down utility costs for other ratepayers.

However, the Energy + Environmental Economics (E3) report cited Virginia Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) research that found new power and transmission infrastructure could increase system costs for all customers, with monthly increases of between $14 and $37 by 2040.

"The cumulative effects of rapid load growth will test existing rate structures and market constructs over time," E3 admitted. “In markets experiencing the fastest macro-level demand growth, rate design and cost allocation methods will need to evolve more quickly to keep pace with changing system costs."