House fast-tracks a 100-megawatt data center cost standard states can adopt at will

The operative word is "could". The bill would establish standards that state regulators could adopt, and states and localities already hold primary authority over individual projects ^[2][9]. A campus drawing 100 megawatts or more starts paying for its own interconnection only after the commission in its state adopts the standard and writes it into a rate case.

Rep. Gabe Evans, the Colorado Republican who sponsored it, made the case in a Washington Reporter op-ed on Monday: "The principle is commonsense: Those creating the new demand should be responsible for the costs associated with meeting that demand" ^[3][4]. Sara Chieffo, senior vice president of government affairs at the League of Conservation Voters, disagrees. "With only a weak directive to states to voluntarily consider adopting cost protections against the energy costs of data centers for ratepayers, state regulators could ultimately choose to ignore this bill," she said in a statement before the vote ^[10].

Mitch Jones, managing director of policy and litigation at Food & Water Watch, argues it cuts the other way. The legislation would speed construction of new data centers, he says, and "provide questionable means for companies to claim they are paying for their own power" ^[11]. "If Congress truly intends to take the AI data center crisis seriously, it must reject this pointless legislation that merely suggests states should act," Jones said ^[12]. Hakeem Jeffries, reading the same optional standards, said the bill is a step forward but that more clearly needs to be done ^[13].

Evans and Castor introduced this in June, and it reaches the floor about three months later ^[6][17]. The route needs two thirds of the chamber and is normally reserved for measures nobody expects to fight over ^[5]. The recess that begins Thursday runs seven weeks to the Nov. 3 election ^[14], which puts the vote about seven weeks before the count ^[18]. Cook rates both sponsors' races toss ups ^[6]. Castor, whose district Florida's legislature redrew this year, said in June: "My neighbors across Florida are grappling with skyrocketing electric bills. Ratepayers should not have to subsidize wealthy corporations' growing energy demands, especially from AI data centers" ^[8].

The bill would codify parts of the Ratepayer Protection Pledge that Trump released in March ^[7]. CNBC did not estimate the ratepayer cost at stake, or how many operating and planned facilities clear 100 megawatts ^[16].

In my view the 100 megawatt figure will matter first as something to cite. Commission staff contesting a utility's proposal to spread large-load interconnection and generation costs across all customer classes now have a federal number to point at, and citing one is cheaper than establishing it in a contested docket. Two readings would make that wrong. Jones's, in which a paper claim of self-supply buys faster approvals; and Chieffo's, in which the commissions sitting on the biggest interconnection queues never take the standards up at all ^[11][10].