CUB Endorses the Power to the People Act
Posted on January 20, 2026 by Charlotte Shuff
Tags, Energy, General Interest
On January 15, 2026, U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland introduced the Power to the People Act. This bill aims to control the impacts of data centers across the country on households and other businesses. As data centers have exploded, most utility customers have seen higher bills, and many states are starting to face energy shortages in the coming years.
The Power to the People Act promotes the creation of data center customer classes and incentivizes data centers to come online with their own energy resources. Both of these goals will help manage the huge amount of electricity data centers are now demanding, while protecting other customers — including families —from rising power bills.
This bill has been endorsed by CUB, as well as Maryland People’s Counsel, Consumer Federation of America, National Consumer Law Center, Public Citizen, NRDC, and Union of Concerned Scientists.
Data Centers Put Our Energy Systems at Risk
Data centers are putting a strain on our energy system and driving up costs on our power bills. These giant campuses, mainly filled with computers, use a massive amount of electricity — an entire city’s worth! A single 30 MW data center uses more electricity than the City of Ashland. Larger, 250 MW data centers, associated with AI, require a similar amount of energy to the City of Eugene.
And these city-sized energy users are coming to Oregon in droves. In just the last five years, data centers’ growth for just Portland General Electric has been the equivalent of adding 162,400 families to PGE’s system.
Data centers are a huge problem across the country, too. Virginia has been the leader in the country for this new industry and has seen catastrophic impacts on energy bills. Texas, California, and Ohio have also seen an explosion in recent years. While many states have either proposed or passed protections to slow skyrocketing energy bills, the Power to the People Act is the first national solution proposed.
What Does the Power to the People Act Do?
At its core, the Power to the People Act seeks to control the impacts of data centers on our energy systems and energy costs. According to Senator Van Hollen:
“The Power for the People Act seeks to hold data centers accountable for the increased energy prices they are causing through needed reforms that would prevent consumers from subsidizing data center development through their energy bills. It also would ensure that data centers interconnecting to the grid do not overwhelm the system, causing grid reliability issues that result in power outages.”
A New Type of Customer: Data Centers vs. The Rest of Us
The way this bill would accomplish holding data centers accountable is by singling out data centers and cryptocurrency operations from the rest of the electric utility customers.
Normal Utility Customers: Organic Load Growth
The Power to the People Act separates “normal” utility customers, who behave the way that we traditionally expect in adding energy use. New homes, small businesses, and even industry, like manufacturing, add small amounts of load (new energy demand) to utilities every year. This growth happens at about the same pace between residential, commercial, and industrial customers, making it easy for utilities to plan to provide enough electricity for everyone.
Outside the Normal: Data Centers
Data centers are a different animal. We have never seen a single type of energy customer grow at a rate that outpaces all others. Not only are these new data centers requiring more energy than almost anyone else, but they are growing well beyond what our utilities could have expected a decade ago. Adding a city’s worth of electricity to the system takes an enormous amount of planning and investment from utilities, making data centers very expensive for the energy grid to take on.
States Must Consider New Customer Category for Data Centers
The Power to the People Act would require states to consider creating a new customer class for data centers. Creating this separation makes it much easier for utilities to charge data centers for the costs that they are adding to the energy system.
Sound familiar? That’s because in 2025, Oregon passed the POWER Act to do this! Thanks to CUB’s efforts, along with huge community support, Oregon utilities are currently going through the process of separating data center costs. While the impacts on our energy bills has not yet been finalized, CUB expects data centers will be paying significantly more.
The Power to the People Act also identifies local transmission costs as something to be charged directly to data centers. These costs can be extremely high and are too often spread between all customers despite only serving data centers. In Oregon, we have seen PGE invest at least $210 million in Hillsboro for local transmission just for data center use.
While the federal government cannot actually direct states to implement this big change, it is an important step toward creating consumer protections. Just the act of considering this new customer category could be enough for many states to take action.
Incentivizing Data Centers That Bring Their Own Energy Sources
In addition to rising costs, data centers’ demand for huge amounts of electricity is putting a massive strain on utilities and regional energy grids. Too often, data centers request to be connected to the energy grid at the expense of utilities’ ability to add new homes or small businesses. If too many data centers come online at once, utilities could face energy shortages that may cause rolling blackouts — or worse.
The Power to the People Act creates a queue (a waiting line) for new data centers that prioritizes facilities that have smaller impacts on the energy grid. In this queue, data centers that have their own generation would get to be higher in the queue to get on the grid. Those with battery storage or the technology to lower energy consumption during days when utilities need more power for other customers will also get preferential treatment.
Any data center that would cause an issue for the reliability of the energy grid would be delayed in getting service from utilities. The bill also stop data centers using diesel generators from being added to the queue.
Take Action: Contact Your Legislators
Your U.S. legislators need to hear from you! You can call or email your legislators directly and ask them to support the Power to the People Act (find your elected officials here!)
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01/20/26 | 0 Comments | CUB Endorses the Power to the People Act