Mark McNees

Energy policy analyst | AI's hidden cost to your electric bill | FSU Entrepreneurship Prof | USA Today, The Hill | Host, InNOLEvation® Mindset

[Mark McNees @markmcnees]

Texas, Florida, Ohio, and Oregon now agree: data centers should pay their own way.
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But every one of those laws audits what a utility charges its customers, not what it pays its own affiliated generator for the power in between. That gap is where the next cost shift hides. I wrote about it yesterday.
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https://t.co/UtbxQoI6ZS
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#EnergyPolicy #DataCenters #Ratepayers #SB484 #AffiliatePricing #UtilityRegulation

[Mark McNees @markmcnees]

Even Texas now says data centers should pay their own way.
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Gov. Abbott directed regulators to protect ratepayers and moved to repeal the sales-tax breaks the state used to land these projects. Largest data center market in the country. Queue is 439 GW, 5x the state's peak demand.
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https://t.co/l3K0CkD7Om
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#EnergyPolicy #DataCenters #Ratepayers #AIEnergy #SB484 #Texas

[Mark McNees @markmcnees]

@TexasTribune The sales-tax repeal is the part to watch. States spent years competing to give data centers the biggest incentives. Texas just signaled the giveaway era is ending and the pay-your-own-way era is starting.

[Mark McNees @markmcnees]

@politico The federal bills follow the states, not the other way around. Florida, Ohio, Oregon, and now Texas already moved to make data centers fund the capacity they trigger. Washington is catching up to a fight the states are already running.

[Mark McNees @markmcnees]

@business The biggest data center state in the country, red state, just adopted the load-creator-pays rule. Florida (SB 484), Ohio, and Oregon got there first. The model is now bipartisan and spreading fast.

[Florida Politics @Fla_Pol]

Florida’s data center law leaves utility pricing blind spot

@markmcnees: The gap SB 484 left open

#FlaPol

https://t.co/YTI7T750zM

[Mark McNees @markmcnees]

In Oregon, households were paying more than twice the per-kilowatt-hour rate that data centers paid.
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Portland General Electric just moved to fix it: data center rates up 29%, residential rates down 1.3%. The subsidy ran the wrong way, and the state corrected it.
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https://t.co/d0o41h4emb
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#EnergyPolicy #DataCenters #Ratepayers #UtilityRates #AIEnergy #GridCosts #Oregon

[Mark McNees @markmcnees]

@business reports more than a dozen bills in Congress now aim to stop data centers from shifting grid costs onto households.
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Florida and Pennsylvania already did it at the state level. Load creators pay for the load they create. The federal debate just caught up.
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https://t.co/wzBmH1TwhG

[Mark McNees @markmcnees]

You cannot bill a data center for grid capacity it refuses to use. That is the whole point of going behind the meter.
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The gas, the emissions, the strain on fuel markets still cost somebody. Just not the company that created the demand. The accountability rule works, which is why they are building around it.
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https://t.co/f62MEkTdu9
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#EnergyPolicy #DataCenters #Ratepayers #CostAccountability #BehindTheMeter

[Mark McNees @markmcnees]

States are passing laws making data centers pay for the grid capacity they trigger. So the biggest players are going around the grid: building their own gas plants behind the meter.
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One in Louisiana will burn 2.2 gigawatts, twice peak New Orleans. The point is to dodge accountability for rates.
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https://t.co/f62MEkTdu9
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#EnergyPolicy #DataCenters #Ratepayers #BehindTheMeter #UtilityRates

[Mark McNees @markmcnees]

Florida. Pennsylvania. Now Oregon. Three states in 2026 passed laws making data centers pay for the grid capacity their demand triggers.
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In Oregon the result was immediate: data center rates up 29 percent, household rates down. The model works and it is spreading.
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https://t.co/JEaNw1GhtJ
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#EnergyPolicy #DataCenters #Ratepayers #SB484 #PowerAct #ElectricityRates

[Mark McNees @markmcnees]

New site is live. Rebuilt https://t.co/BNxY9jrTfj from the ground up: the writing, the talks, the reel, all in one place.
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One throughline: when growth creates a cost, the company that made it should pay. Now law in three states. Come have a look.
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https://t.co/iQqjzwtSQp
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#EnergyPolicy #Keynote #DataCenters #Ratepayers

[Mark McNees @markmcnees]

Oregon just settled the argument. Portland General Electric filed to raise data center rates 29 percent and cut residential rates 1.3 percent at the same time.
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Households were paying 20 cents per kWh. Data centers paid 8. Make the load creator pay, and home bills go down.
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https://t.co/JEaNw1GhtJ
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#EnergyPolicy #DataCenters #Ratepayers #UtilityRates #ElectricityPrices #CostAccountability

[Mark McNees @markmcnees]

@business The pushback follows the same pattern everywhere: communities get the costs and the disruption, the developer gets the returns. Give people a rule that makes the data center pay for the grid and infrastructure it triggers, and most of these fights never start.

[Mark McNees @markmcnees]

@business Pritzker's own reason for the pause is the legislature's failure to raise rates on the data centers driving the usage. That's the whole fight in one sentence. Set the rate so the load creator pays, and you don't need a pause or a subsidy.

[Mark McNees @markmcnees]

@thehill 160,000 signatures against one data center is what organized opposition looks like when residents have no other lever. Give communities a cost rule that makes the data center pay for the grid and water it uses, and most of these fights never reach the petition stage.

[Mark McNees @markmcnees]

When federal officials float breaking up the nation's largest grid operator, the real signal is that data center load has outrun the cost rules. PJM serves 13 states. The bill for new capacity is landing on households who never triggered it.
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The fix is not structural. It is who pays. Make the load creator fund the load.
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https://t.co/PuXBHwzv4A
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#EnergyPolicy #PJM #DataCenters #Ratepayers #GridCosts #AIEnergy

[Mark McNees @markmcnees]

New York just sent the nation's first data center moratorium to the governor's desk. The reason: 70 percent of places with rising electric rates sit within 50 miles of data center activity, per a Bloomberg analysis cited in the bill.
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Florida picked a different fix. SB 484 does not pause anything. It makes the load creator pay for the capacity it triggers. Price the cost, do not freeze the build.
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https://t.co/3vz3VTSCMk
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#EnergyPolicy #DataCenters #Ratepayers #SB484 #ElectricityRates #AIEnergy #GridCosts

[Mark McNees @markmcnees]

Illinois just paused data center tax incentives, which means the subsidy math no longer works. The fix isn't to keep handing out incentives or to cut them off. It's to make the data center pay for the grid capacity it triggers, so the public stops subsidizing the cost on both ends.

[Mark McNees @markmcnees]

@business @sarahsholder @rileyraygriffin One of the poorest regions in the country is exactly where the cost question matters most. When a data center triggers grid upgrades, the bill lands on the households that can least absorb it unless the deal makes the load creator pay for what it built.