It had the support of Oklahoma U.S. Senators James Lankford and Alan Armstrong, but Democrats argued it was a “sham” bill and defeated the Ratepayer Protection Act Wednesday in the U.S. Senate.
The bill, as proposed, would be similar to Oklahoma’s ratepayer protection act enacted last legislative session in the state. The final vote in the Senate was 57-43 as Democrats called it ineffective and “toothless” and blocked its passage in a procedural vote. Republicans and other supporters of the measure needed 60 votes for approval and in order to overcome a filibuster.
“Americans are demanding real guardrails on AI and data centers, but all the Republicans offer is a toothless messaging bill. The bill is a fraud. I can sum up the shortcomings of the Republican data center bill with one word: optional. The bill is optional,” Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday on the Senate floor.
While Democrats were successful in blocking the measure, critics pointed out it also put the Democratic Senators on record in opposing a measure supporters argue would help ratepayers. The failure now gives Republicans a new line of attack against them in the closing weeks of the approaching midterm election campaigns.
Some Democrats voted with Republicans in favor of the bill including Sens. Jon Ossoff (Ga.), Raphael Warnock (Ga.), Maggie Hassan (N.H.) and Amy Klobuchar (Minn.).
The measure, already passed overwhelmingly 417-3 by the U.S. House, would force states to consider adopting standards to make tech companies pay for the additional electricity costs caused by data centers.
The Hill explained that the act does not actually force states to adopt these standards and could ultimately lead to no action, which is why its detractors are calling the legislation ineffective. Democrats have said the chamber should instead take up legislation that mandates that Big Tech cover the cost.
Ratepayer Protection Act
The bill requires state utility regulators and nonregulated utilities to consider implementing a standard to hold certain large-load customers responsible for the costs associated with any generation, transmission, or distribution upgrade of electric service necessary to serve such customers. A large-load customer means a non-residential electric consumer that enters, or requests to enter, an agreement concerning the sale of electric energy primarily to operate information technology infrastructure and related systems pertaining to data storage and computational applications and services (e.g., data centers) that have a peak electric demand of 100 megawatts or more at a single site or campus.
Specifically, the bill requires states to consider implementing a federal standard for large-load customers. The standard must require rates charged by electric utilities for providing electric service to a large-load customer to be designed to recover from the large-load customer the full, incremental cost of any generation, transmission, or distribution upgrade necessary to serve such customer. This rate must include the costs that would be incurred if the large-load customer terminates an agreement with the electric utility pertaining to the sale of electric energy or otherwise ceases the purchase of energy from the electric utility.
Under the standard, an electric utility must require the large-load customer to provide to the utility financial assurances or contributions to cover the cost of any generation, transmission, or distribution upgrade that is necessary to serve the load of a large-load customer before the utility makes any generation, transmission, or distribution upgrade.
