Roger Pielke ponders the ongoing debate about American data centers.
Keeping up with data center–driven electricity demand requires supply-side solutions, not bans. …
… Luddite dynamics have been replayed in the context of almost every important technology of the last half-century: fracking, incandescent light bulbs, SUVs, childhood vaccines, water fluoridation, nuclear power, wind turbines, genetically modified crops—each became a proxy fight in which the combatants often let pro- or anti-technology symbolism crowd out consideration of risks and benefits.
Data centers have now joined the list of contested technologies, and the fight follows a familiar script. One veteran organizer explained plainly why national environmental groups seized on the issue in an interview with Politico: “There is not a better way to be relevant that is as prevalent as data centers.” That organizer—Jane Kleeb, the Bold Alliance founder who spent two decades rallying communities against oil pipelines—explained the underlying strategy: “After doing this work for 20 years, it is easier to mobilize communities to block something than it is to build something.” …
… People care deeply about the cost of living. If data centers contribute to increasing those costs, we should expect strong opposition. But is it actually the case that data centers are driving up the average American’s electricity bill?
A 2026 study by researchers at the nonprofit Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) applied an instrumental variables approach to isolate the causal effect of data center growth on retail electricity rates from 2015 to 2024. Their findings? Data centers pushed average U.S. retail rates modestly down. The mechanism follows familiar economics: Electricity generation features high fixed costs, transmission and distribution reward scale, and unit generation costs keep falling—so durable new demand spreads those fixed costs across more kilowatt-hours and lowers the average price.
The electricity demand of data centers, actual and projected, is more modest than most people realize.
