Ratepayer Protection Act: What Data Center Bill Means for RI
The U.S. House passed the "Ratepayer Protection Act" (H.R. 9340), which would require states to consider making large data centers pay for associated grid upgrades, though it stalled in the Senate. Meanwhile, Rhode Island has proposed its own stricter bills (H7331 and S2776) that would mandate data centers over 50MW pay for infrastructure costs and include water-use reporting requirements. The federal bill uses "consider" while the Rhode Island bills use "mandatory" language, reflecting different approaches to regulating data center energy and water impacts.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed the "Ratepayer Protection Act" (H.R. 9340) by a vote of 417-3, a measure intended to make large data centers pay for electricity grid upgrades. However, the bill, introduced by Rep. Gabe Evans (R-CO) and co-sponsored by Rep. Kathy Castor (D-FL), only requires state regulatory authorities to consider adopting a standard where new, large-load data centers (100 megawatts or more) would recover the full incremental cost of necessary generation, transmission, or distribution upgrades. The bill stalled in the Senate after an objection from Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM), who argued it relied too heavily on voluntary commitments.
The federal bill's "consider" language contrasts with proposed legislation in Rhode Island. State bills H7331, introduced by Rep. Brian Patrick Kennedy, and S2776, introduced by Sens. Louis DiPalma, Frank Ciccone, John Burke, and Brian Urso, set a lower threshold of 50 megawatts and use mandatory language, requiring the Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission (PUC) to ensure data centers bear their full infrastructure costs without passing them to residential or non-data center commercial customers. These Rhode Island bills also include provisions for annual water-use reporting and water-efficiency plans for data centers.
The White House had previously announced a "Ratepayer Protection Pledge" on March 4, which tech giants like Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, and xAI voluntarily signed, committing to pay for their power needs and infrastructure. Critics, including David Pomerantz of the Energy and Policy Institute and Mitch Jones of Food and Water Watch, have expressed skepticism about the enforceability of both the federal bill and the voluntary pledge. The Rhode Island bills remain proposals, highlighting a stricter state-level approach compared to the federal government's more lenient framework.