Sponsors
The bill improves planning and drives data-center efficiency through standardized measurement and public reporting while imposing new compliance, fee, and disclosure burdens on operators that could raise costs and create administrative complexity.
State and regional planners, grid operators, and utilities will get aggregated data on data center electricity use and projections so they can anticipate demand and reduce the risk of local supply shortfalls.
Data center operators and technicians will have clear, consistent performance metrics (PUE and WUE) and referenced ISO/DOE definitions to measure and report energy and water use, reducing regulatory uncertainty and improving interoperability.
Data center operators and local communities will be required to prepare five-year energy and water use projections plus reduction proposals, encouraging efficiency investments that can lower operational consumption and environmental impacts.
Data center operators—especially smaller operators—face new measurement, reporting, and compliance costs plus the risk of large federal fines (e.g., stated $20,000/day) for negligent reporting, which can raise operating expenses and be passed to customers or threaten business viability.
States may impose fees on operators to fund data collection, and those fees (or higher operating costs) can be passed through to customers or deter investment in new facilities, potentially raising prices or slowing regional economic development.
Operators with facilities in multiple jurisdictions will face administrative burden and compliance complexity from state-level implementation variability and a broad definition of 'State' that includes tribes and Freely Associated States.
Based on analysis of 4 sections of legislative text.
Requires large data centers (≥25 MW) to report annual energy/water use, PUE/WUE, and five-year projections to states or federal agencies; federal agencies may charge fees for collection.
Introduced March 25, 2026 by Richard Joseph Durbin · Last progress March 25, 2026
Requires large data centers (those with at least 25 megawatts peak demand) to report detailed annual energy and water use data — including monthly totals, on-site generation, and efficiency metrics — to State agencies, or to federal agencies if the State has no collection program. The reports must also include five-year projections and planned reduction measures. When States do not collect the data, the EPA Administrator together with the Secretaries of Energy and Agriculture will collect reports and may charge fees on reporting data centers to pay for the work.