AI Data Centres to Pay for the Grid — Oil and Solar Agree

Photo: the US Capitol at sunset. A bipartisan Senate quartet wants to rewrite the rules for who pays for America's power grid — and AI data centres are squarely in the crosshairs. (John Brighenti, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

There is a line item buried inside your electric bill that you never agreed to. It is the cost of building the transmission lines, substations and generation capacity that feed the AI data centres springing up from Texas to Virginia — and right now, utilities are allowed to hand that cost to households even when the data centre agreed to a "ratepayer protection" pledge. A new Senate bill would kill that arrangement dead. And the surest sign this is not a normal energy fight: the oil and gas industry and the solar industry are backing it — together.

The Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026 — BAAJA, filed as S. 5653 — was introduced on September 30 by a quartet that has taken to calling itself the "Four Corners": Senators Mike Lee (R-Utah), Shelley Moore Capito (R-West Virginia), Martin Heinrich (D-New Mexico) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island). The nickname nods to where they sit — the lead Republican and Democrat on the Senate energy committee, and the lead Republican and Democrat on the Senate environment committee, the four corners of the chamber's energy jurisdiction. The bill runs 417 pages, has been referred to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and is emphatically not law. But it is the most serious attempt yet to answer the question the AI boom keeps forcing onto the table: who pays for the power?

The Four Corners deal: 417 pages, four senators, one bet

The bill's headline purpose is permitting reform — speeding up federal approvals for pipelines, power lines, solar farms and other major infrastructure. Environmental impact statements would get a two-year deadline; environmental assessments a one-year deadline. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission would gain expanded "backstop" authority to site interstate transmission, and transmission applications could move forward alongside state reviews instead of waiting for them. That is the part the energy industry loves. The part that matters to your bills is buried deeper.

What gave the bill its fresh October framing is the demand story: Fortune, writing October 11, presented it as a direct answer to the electricity-demand surge driven by the AI data-centre construction spree. Utilities across the country have been filing for rate increases tied to serving new large loads — exactly the pressure a bill with "Affordability" in its title is built to capture.

The data-centre clause is the whole story

Section 2107, the ratepayer-protection section, is where the bill stops being a generic permitting package and becomes an AI story. Under current federal law, as Heatmap's Robinson Meyer explains it, a local utility cannot force a data centre to pay for new infrastructure built to serve it and the existing powerlines it already relies on — which means ratepayers quietly absorb some of the cost of serving the data centre, even when the developer has signed a ratepayer-protection pledge. BAAJA would change that: utilities could charge data centres and other energy-hungry facilities for both the new and the old infrastructure, effectively writing a form of legal discrimination against data centres into the Federal Power Act.

The specifics, per the Bipartisan Policy Center's section-by-section explainer, are blunt. FERC would have to revise its out-of-date transmission pricing policy — known as "And Pricing" — so that data centres pay both their share of the existing system and the added cost they trigger. For new data centres of 20 megawatts or larger, other customers could not be charged for the added costs of serving them — the full stack of generation, storage, transmission and distribution. The bill also tackles the stranded-asset problem head-on: because AI is an uncertain, novel technology driving load growth, and the power plants and lines built to serve a data centre have multi-decade lifespans, there is a real risk that utilities build for a facility that shuts down early or cuts consumption as efficiency improves. BAAJA answers that by making data centres keep paying even if they leave early, and requiring them to put up financial guarantees before utilities build to serve them.

It also hands states a bigger stick. Regulators could charge large data centres above cost and use the surplus to lower other customers' bills. States could restrict which data centres get to interconnect at all — only those that most benefit other customers — require data centres to bring their own generation, or cap how much power they draw. And data centres, cloud computing facilities and crypto miners would have to report their energy use to the federal government every year, ending the era of load secrecy.

"The American people want lower energy bills, and they want more clean energy," Heinrich said when the bill was unveiled, adding that "it will ensure they pay their fair share of the grid upgrades they require — not leave that bill to American families," in comments carried by the Associated Press.

This goes much further than anything Washington has tried so far. As Axios reported, the data-centre measures would move past the mostly voluntary framework that currently governs the industry — pledges like Google's vow to cover the full cost of boosting three states' nuclear plants to power its AI growth, which are real but optional, reversible and uneven. BAAJA would make the obligation federal law, with fines on the table and the courthouse doors deliberately narrowed.

The strangest alliance in Washington this week

What makes the bill politically legible is who lined up behind it. The Solar Energy Industries Association is backing the deal — Ben Norris, the association's senior vice president, called the unlocked clean energy and transmission capacity "well worth the tradeoffs" made elsewhere. And so is the fossil fuel industry. EQT chief executive Toby Rice framed the bill as "tech-neutral," adding a line that has travelled well beyond the press release: "If you think it's hard to get a pipeline built, try building a transmission line." Rice's company spent a decade building the Mountain Valley Pipeline, so he has standing to say it — and the image of a gas CEO and a solar lobbyist pulling on the same rope is the one Washington photographer's dream this bill actually delivered.

The environmental left, meanwhile, is not having it. "A deal that fast-tracks more gas, closes courthouse doors, and dismantles our laws to further embolden a lawless administration is not a compromise we can afford now," said Abigail Dillen, president of Earthjustice Action. The Sierra Club has argued the bill weakens the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act — including, the group says, "the ability of states to use state courts to protect their own waterways."

We checked the Bipartisan Policy Center's section-by-section explainer and the Senate fact sheets this morning against the Bloomberg Law and AP write-ups, and the ratepayer-protection language tracks word for word: the 20-megawatt threshold, the anti-cost-shifting rule, the above-cost charging power for states. This is not a press-release aspiration; the provisions are drafted.

What it rewrites — and what it breaks

The permitting half of the bill is genuinely sweeping. Beyond the two-year and one-year review deadlines, federal permits would generally stay valid across presidential administrations unless extraordinary circumstances, legal violations or a court order intervened — an administration could no longer delay or block permits for an entire class of energy projects, with fines available for trying. Litigation would be channelled into federal courts. The Bureau of Land Management would get 60 days to complete certain geothermal drilling permits. And grid operators would be pushed — sometimes forced — to squeeze more capacity out of the grid they already have: virtual power plants would get guaranteed access to regional markets, letting households team up with solar panels, batteries and flexible EV charging to sell grid flexibility back to the system.

The environmental objections are not theatre. Fast-tracking gas alongside solar, closing state-court avenues for water disputes, and handing FERC siting power that overrides local objections are real tradeoffs — the kind that normally kill bills in committee. Whether the "Four Corners" can hold their coalition together through a markup is the open question, and votes look unlikely before the November 3 midterm elections.

Photo: a high-voltage transmission tower. Under BAAJA, the cost of lines like these — built to serve AI data centres — could no longer land on household bills. (Ron Clausen, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Our take: the free-rider era is ending either way

Let us be honest about the odds. A 417-page bill that rewrites NEPA, the Endangered Species Act and the Federal Power Act in one motion is not sailing through a Senate weeks from a midterm election. The provisions that the Sierra Club and Earthjustice hate are load-bearing — take them out and the oil and gas support walks, and with it the Republican votes the bill needs. The permitting reform that has eluded Congress for a decade is not suddenly easy because four senators got clever with a nickname.

But the data-centre provisions are the tell. You do not get the solar lobby and a gas CEO signing the same letter unless something has genuinely shifted in the politics of who pays for electricity. For years the industry's position was shoddy by design: promise households they would not pay, structure the tariffs so they did anyway, and rely on the fact that nobody reads the fine print on a utility bill. BAAJA's answer is crude but clarifying — make the obligation law, make it apply to the existing grid as well as the new wires, and let states charge above cost and hand the surplus back to households. Even if the bill dies, no utility commission in America is going to approve another rate case with data-centre costs socialised into residential rates without a fight. The free-rider era is over; BAAJA is just the first draft of its obituary.

For the AI buildout, the timing could hardly be more pointed. KKR warned this month that AI debt has swallowed 6% of America's bond market; the September stall in AI borrowing — down to $23 billion from a $113 billion June peak — is the story we have been tracking all week. The data-centre economy is being repriced on two fronts at once: Wall Street is getting choosier about lending to it, and Washington is now arguing about whether households should subsidise its power. Waymo just borrowed $5 billion — its first-ever debt — and Oracle's $18 billion New Mexico data-centre project has become the case study in how expensive this buildout can get. Add mandatory grid-cost liability to that ledger, and the economics of the AI infrastructure boom start to look very different.

Update, Oct. 11: what the fine print actually says — and why it waits for the midterms

The mechanics live in Section 2107, per the Bipartisan Policy Center's explainer: FERC must update the out-of-date "And Pricing" policy so data centres pay both their share of the existing system and the added cost they trigger; no cost-shifting to other customers for new data centres 20 MW or larger; data centres must post financial guarantees before utilities build, guarding against stranded-asset risk if a campus closes early; states may charge data centres ABOVE cost and use the surplus to cut other bills — or require them to bring their own generation. The timeline: S. 5653 was referred to the Senate Energy Committee on Sept 30 and has NOT become law; sponsors say the first vote comes after the November midterms (TokenPost; BizTech Weekly). Fresh coalition signal: the US Hispanic Business Council endorsed the bill Oct 9. For the build the bill would govern, see Oracle's $18 billion data-centre build the bill would govern — and for the financing backdrop, Wall Street's $113B AI-debt machine.

Sources: Fortune (via aiweekly.co, October 11, 2026); Bloomberg Law; Axios (via Daily Caller, October 8); Associated Press (via Daily Caller, October 8); Heatmap News (Robinson Meyer explainer); Bipartisan Policy Center section-by-section explainer; U.S. Senate Energy Committee and Senator Heinrich fact sheets; Senator Whitehouse's X post (October 11); TokenPost bill summary.

By Lalu Baidya. Lalu Baidya covers US energy policy and the AI infrastructure buildout for TechPulse USA, from Capitol Hill to the grid. He writes about who pays for the technology everyone else is building.