Sponsors (3)
The bill increases transparency about data centers' water, energy, and pollution impacts—helping planners, communities, and regulators—but does so at the cost of added reporting burdens, potential proprietary/privacy risks, and increased resource needs for federal agencies.
State and local governments, utilities, and planners will receive frequent, disaggregated data on data-center water use (including reused water), energy consumption, and new data-center starts, enabling better water allocation, grid planning, and infrastructure investment decisions.
Communities and environmental regulators will get regular reporting of greenhouse gas emissions and pollutant discharges from data centers, improving awareness of local pollution and cumulative impacts on overburdened communities.
Households and taxpayers will gain transparency through State-level EIA reports showing how data-center energy use is changing and how it may affect residential energy bills.
Data centers and agencies will incur administrative and reporting costs to meet the new requirements, costs that could be passed on to customers or taxpayers.
Frequent, detailed public reporting about individual facilities could reveal commercially sensitive operational details, posing privacy and proprietary risks for businesses.
EPA and EIA will need additional staff and funding to meet the more frequent reporting schedule, potentially diverting agency resources from other programs or priorities.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Requires the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Energy Information Administration (EIA) to collect and publish regular public reports on the environmental and energy impacts of data centers in the United States. Reports must start within six months of enactment and include metrics on water use, water reuse, pollutants discharged, greenhouse gas emissions, state-level energy use, changes in energy consumption, new data center openings, and household energy impacts. The EPA must report at least every three months on water consumption, reuse, effects on local water systems (including potable water availability, utility demand, service disruptions, and residential rate changes), pollutants discharged, and greenhouse gas emissions and their effects on overburdened communities. The EIA must collect six-month energy-consumption data for each data center and publish biannual reports that break down consumption by state, describe changes, list new centers that began operating, and report household energy use and cost measures. The bill references the statutory definition of “data center.”
Introduced January 8, 2026 by Robert Menendez · Last progress January 8, 2026