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Congressional Daily Record
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Issued
March 25, 2026
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Download official Senate Record PDFReturn to issue contextTHE RATEPAYER PROTECTION PLEDGE ANNOUNCED ON MARCH 4, 2026, REFLECTS
PROMOTE ELECTRICITY AFFORDABILITY, AND ENSURE THAT ALL PEOPLE OF THE
HOSPITALS, AND FARMS, HAVE ACCESS TO RELIABLE AND AFFORDABLE ENERGY AS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND DATA CENTER INFRASTRUCTURE EXPANDS ACROSS
THE UNITED STATES
Mr. SCOTT of Florida (for himself and Mr. Marshall) submitted the following concurrent resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources:
S. Con. Res. 30
Whereas data centers consumed approximately 183 terawatt-
hours of electricity in the United States in 2024, which is
more than 4 percent of total national electricity consumption
in the United States;
Whereas the Department of Energy projects that the share of
total national electricity consumption in the United States
that is consumed by data centers could reach up to 12 percent
by 2028 as artificial intelligence workloads require
continuously operating, high power density computing
infrastructure at unprecedented scale;
Whereas, under the traditional utility regulatory model,
the costs of building, upgrading, and maintaining the
transmission and distribution infrastructure required to
service new large industrial loads are socialized across all
ratepayers through rate proceedings, meaning that households
and small businesses in the United States effectively
subsidize the electricity infrastructure of some of the most
highly capitalized companies in history;
Whereas, because data centers cluster geographically rather
than diffuse evenly across the electric grid, the impact of
data centers on local electricity rates is acute and uneven;
and
Whereas, on March 4, 2026, Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft,
OpenAI, Oracle, and xAI signed the Ratepayer Protection
Pledge at the White House, committing to negotiate separate
rate structures with utilities and State governments wherever
those signatories build data centers and to pay those rates
for generation and delivery infrastructure whether or not the
signatories consume the electricity, establishing a pay-
whether-used obligation that, alongside protecting ratepayers
from infrastructure cost-shifting, creates an incentive for
the signatories to make their backup generation resources
available to grid operators during scarcity events, thereby
enhancing reliability for all people of the United States:
Now, therefore, be it
Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives
concurring), That—
(1) it is the Sense of Congress that—
(A) the Ratepayer Protection Pledge announced on March 4,
2026, reflects sound national policy founded on the principle
that the people of the United States should not be required
to foot the bill for private data center energy and
infrastructure costs;
(B) the artificial intelligence data center boom in the
United States should be leveraged to address electricity
affordability and
benefit all households and businesses in the United States;
and
(C) relevant Federal agencies, including the Department of
Energy and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, should
support and facilitate the implementation of the commitments
made in the Ratepayer Protection Pledge, including by working
with private companies to expedite the permitting and
interconnection of new energy generation resources; and
(2) Congress encourages additional artificial intelligence
companies, hyperscalers, data center operators, and
technology firms that have not yet signed the Ratepayer
Protection Pledge to voluntarily adopt equivalent commitments
without delay.