Senate Democrat blocks House-passed bill on data center electricity costs

Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) blocked Sen. Jon Husted’s (R-Ohio) Thursday effort to unanimously pass a bill that seeks to force states to consider making tech companies cover their data centers’ electricity price impacts.

The New Mexico Democrat blocked the Ohio Republican’s effort to pass the Ratepayer Protection Act through unanimous consent, arguing that the bill is toothless.

The bill, which passed the House 417-3 on Wednesday, forces states to hold a hearing on rules to make data centers pay for increased electricity costs from their operations, but it does not make states adopt any such standards or force tech companies to cover the costs.

“It’s not enough for us to tell states to consider making data centers pay for grid updates. Rather than voluntary pledges or suggestions to states, Congress needs to pass real legislation with real teeth,” Heinrich said.

Husted, ahead of Heinrich’s objection, said the bill “would require state utility regulators to consider standards ensuring that large load customers pay the full incremental cost of the infrastructure needed to serve them.”

“This is how we make sure American families are not left footing the bill for energy infrastructure required by data centers,” Husted added.

After he objected to the unanimous passage of Husted’s bill, Heinrich attempted to unanimously pass his Grid Savings Act , which he said would “require large load customers like data centers to pay for the facilities needed to connect them to the grid, not to consider it, not to make pledges, to actually do it, to pay for the upgrades they need.”

Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) objected to Heinrich’s push.

“The term ‘do-nothing Congress’ exists for a reason. We absolutely accomplished that right now. We did nothing here in the Senate because, again, of Democrat obstruction. This bill would have done something that’s not nothing,” Moreno said.

“The victim of all this is the taxpayer of the United States of America, who’s going to see electricity prices continue to go up because we could have passed a law to solve it. Instead, it’s more games after more games. Like the American people, I’m sick of it, and I know they are. And for that reason, I object,” he added.

Husted, meanwhile, pointed out that his bill had adequate support in the House and was on track to become law.

“The reason that I’m proposing that we pass this piece of legislation is because it passed the House 417-3. If the gentleman from New Mexico’s provision had passed the House 417-3, he would have every right to stand up and ask that we do this. But before we leave here, we ought to do something on a matter that the American people have asked us to do something about, and we have the opportunity to do that with the Ratepayer Protection Act,” he said.

“It is a shame that this opportunity has been missed today, but I will be back to push this issue forward. We have a bipartisan opportunity to get this done, we should do it immediately,” he added.