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"...