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Eye-Popping Power Prices Show AI’s Consumer Cost
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October 2, 2025
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October 2, 2025
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3:00Now PlayingJohn Medina, Senior VP at Moody’s Ratings, talks AI and cloud demand, hyperscalers, and the risk of overbuilding AI data centers.
The burgeoning growth of energy-hungry data centers is rapidly driving up utility bills, and in some parts of the US the jump is staggering.
A Bloomberg News investigation has found that wholesale power now costs as much as 267% more than it did five years ago in areas near data hubs. That hike is passed on to households and businesses, on top of charges to upgrade overburdened grids.
But because those networks cover whole states or regions, consumers who don’t live near data centers can also be affected.
Take Maryland. The state has far fewer data centers than neighboring Virginia — where a huge concentration of the facilities has become dubbed Data Center Alley — yet residents are feeling the effects of that boom.
“Costs are being driven up by data centers that are out of state largely, many of them in northern Virginia,” said David Lapp of the Maryland Office of People’s Counsel, an independent agency that advocates for residential utility customers. “You don’t have to see those data centers to see the higher electric bills.”
The energy needs of AI data hubs are considerable. BloombergNEF forecasts power use by these facilities in the US will double in a decade to almost 9% of all demand.
“Without mitigation, the data centers sucking up all the load are going to make things really expensive for the rest of Americans,” said David Crane, the head of investment firm Generate Capital and a former energy official in the Biden administration.
It’s an issue facing governments around the world. Globally, BNEF expects data hubs to consume more than 4% of electricity by 2035. To put it another way: If the facilities were a country, they’d rank fourth in power demand, behind only China, America and India.
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