By Kevin Hardy, Stateline.org

As Americans grow increasingly frustrated over their electricity bills, states are trying to keep the nation’s growing number of data centers from causing higher energy costs for consumers.

For years, many states competed aggressively to land data centers, sprawling campuses full of the computer servers that store and transmit the data behind apps and websites. But many officials are now scrutinizing how those power-hungry projects might affect the electric bills of households, small businesses and other industries.

Oregon last year became one of the first states to enact a law requiring utilities to charge data centers different electric prices than other industries because of how they drive up the cost of energy production and transmission.

“We are now making data centers pay a higher rate commensurate with the amount of energy they’re sucking out of the system,” said Oregon state Rep. Tom Andersen, a Democrat.

Republican and Democratic leaders in at least a dozen states have targeted data centers with separate, higher electric rates to protect other customers. States also are requiring long-term commitments and financial guarantees through collateral before greenlighting infrastructure investments for new data center projects. But lawmakers acknowledge that numerous factors affect energy prices, so targeting data center-specific costs can be complicated.

An increasingly digital world and the rise of energy-intensive artificial intelligence has led to major expansion of data centers: Consultant McKinsey & Company expects companies to spend nearly $7 trillion worldwide on data centers by 2030. But the industry is facing growing scrutiny, from neighbors who don’t want to live near the massive server farms and from residents worried about how data centers will affect their own swelling utility bills.

Delaware legislation that would charge data centers higher rates advanced out of committee last week. On Tuesday, a Florida state Senate committee approved a bill that would create new rate structures for data centers.

In Oklahoma, a Republican state senator has proposed a moratorium on new data centers until late 2029, allowing the state to study how data centers affect utility rates, the environment and property values.

Separate legislation from state Rep. Brad Boles will seek to protect other ratepayers from the costs of data centers. Boles, the Republican chair of the state Energy and Natural Resources Oversight Committee, said his in-the-works measure would ensure data centers pay their fair share.

Boles told Stateline that his constituents are increasingly worried about data centers, with a dozen potential major ones proposed across the state.

“We’re trying to ensure that those data centers pay for their own infrastructure and we don’t shift that cost or burden to everyday Oklahomans,” he said.

In Oregon, Andersen’s legislation created a new rate structure for data centers with long-term contracts and required regulators to separate the costs of those facilities from other ratepayers.

But consumer advocates have already accused the state’s largest utility of trying to skirt the new law by making residential customers pay part of the long-term cost of supplying large data centers in a pending rate case.

Andersen, a member of the state House Committee on Climate, Energy and Environment, said the new rate structure is unlikely to immediately lower consumer bills. Rather, it aims to curb future increases as data centers require more power generation and transmission.

“We’re not going to change the rates that are being currently paid by the ratepayers and the users of the electricity,” he said. “It’s just going to stop future raises.”

The data center boom

Rising utility bills continue to outpace inflation, sparking anger from consumers and more scrutiny from state regulators, governors and lawmakers.

The boom of data centers is frequently cited as a prime reason for rising electricity prices, as their operation requires more power generation, transmission and distribution upgrades. A Bloomberg News analysis in September found wholesale electricity costs as much as 267% more for a single month than it did five years ago in areas with significant data center activity.

Data center companies say they aren’t the only reason prices are rising.

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“It’s inaccurate to draw a clear line between large load customers like data centers coming online and increases in prices. It’s just not that simple,” said Lucas Fykes, senior director of energy policy and regulatory counsel at the Data Center Coalition, a trade group representing data center owners and users, including Amazon, Meta and Visa.

He said many factors have contributed to higher electricity prices, including extreme weather events and the nation’s aging electric grid.

Fykes said his organization opposes rate structures that treat data centers differently from other large electric users such as industrial sites. The organization is working with regulators as states increasingly implement practices to ensure residents and small businesses aren’t on the hook for big energy investments if major projects including data centers don’t come to fruition.

Fykes said the country is likely just in the “beginning innings” of a longer ramp-up in technology and power needs.

“We are also in a global race to build out data centers, to support AI, to support cloud infrastructure,” he said. “It’s important to make sure that we maintain those assets here in the United States.”

That can pose competing interests for political leaders, including mayors, who have pushed hard to land investments from tech companies.

“We want to be leaders in AI, but we don’t want the infrastructure needed to support it,” said Rusty Paul, the mayor of Sandy Springs, Georgia, in the Atlanta metro area.

He was among several mayors addressing the issue of data centers at last month’s winter meeting of the United States Conference of Mayors in Washington, D.C. On a data center panel, Paul acknowledged the effect of Georgia’s tax incentives for data centers: “They’re just popping up everywhere,” he said.

But utilities and regulators are also making long overdue grid upgrades that aren’t tied to data centers, he said.

“The cost of electricity is going up for everybody — and it’s not all related to data centers,” he said.

A bipartisan push

The Georgia Public Service Commission last year created new rules that officials said would protect ratepayers from data center costs. In addition to covering costs of power consumed at their facilities, data centers would have to fund the costs incurred by upstream generation, transmission and distribution, the regulator said.

But lawmakers aren’t convinced those steps went far enough.

State Sen. Chuck Hufstetler, a Republican, is again pushing legislation that would solidify the regulator’s rules into law. His bill would prohibit utilities from passing along the fuel, generation or transmission costs of data centers to other customers.

He told Stateline that the regulator’s rules need to be codified into law so they can’t be weakened later.

Hufstetler said rising utility bills are among the biggest issues facing his constituents. High prices played a key role in November’s election, when Democrats flipped two seats on the state’s Public Service Commission board — the first time Democrats won statewide constitutional office in nearly two decades.

“I saw people with MAGA hats going into the election polling places that were saying, ‘I’m not voting for those guys that raised my rates,’” Hufstetler said, referring to the Republican incumbents who lost.

Hufstetler said the bill, which passed out of committee last year, has already gained major bipartisan support in the Senate, where it is sponsored by multiple Republicans and Democrats.

“This is very bipartisan,” he said. “We have all heard from our people around the state of Georgia.”

The Georgia Public Service Commission agrees in principle with the legislation, said agency spokesperson Tom Krause. But he said the regulator worries about losing flexibility if its rules are written into law.

“Not just this bill, but whenever the legislature codifies a rule that we put in place, we get a little nervous because it can tie our hands in special circumstances,” he said.

A complex challenge

As part of implementing a law enacted last year, Maryland’s utility regulator is weighing a new rate structure for data centers and other large load users.

Proposed regulations would require certain preapproval analysis for heavy power users, a separate rate tariff for data centers and collateral to ensure other ratepayers don’t end up paying for major investments if projects do not come to fruition.

Maryland’s Office of People’s Counsel, an independent agency representing residential utility users, said the proposed changes meet statutory requirements but could do more to protect consumers.

In a news release last month, Maryland People’s Counsel David S. Lapp said residents are already facing higher costs from data centers from outside the state.

“While we push for better federal rules to address those costs, Maryland has the power—and customers a clear need—to make sure data centers within Maryland take on every cost that they impose on residential customers,” Lapp said.

Democratic Gov. Wes Moore recently joined 12 other governors and the Trump administration in urging the regional grid operator, PJM Interconnection, to shield residents and businesses from the infrastructure costs from data centers.

Maryland state Del. Lorig Charkoudian, a Democrat, said the grid operator has for years failed residents in the 13 states plus the District of Columbia that it serves. By delaying renewable energy projects, she said, PJM has kept older, more expensive power plants online, driving up prices as data centers increase demand.

PJM’s board last month rolled out a new data center plan that it said would improve demand forecasting, accelerate the addition of new generation projects and give states a larger role.

Charkoudian said states and utilities struggle to determine just how much power is needed. Data center users shop around for sites, which can cause wildly inaccurate forecasts of just how much power a utility will need.

“It actually has a very concrete financial impact on ratepayers,” she told Stateline. “And so that’s why one of the things that really could make a difference for ratepayers is if we actually had an accurate count of how much we’re getting online.”

While some of those challenges lie outside the realm of state control, Charkoudian said there are things the state can do, including the new rate structure for larger users. She’s crafting a bill encouraging data centers to curtail their power usage during peak periods, such as hot days, when the electrical system is taxed by heavy usage of air conditioners, Maryland Matters reported.

Charkoudian said adding solar generation and storage are low-cost ways to respond quickly to demand. And states can avoid the need for more generation by doubling down on energy efficiency programs that lower demand and also consumer costs.

“The best time to fix this was five years ago,” she said. “The next best time is right this minute, because it’s only going to get worse.”

Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira contributed to this story. Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org.

©2026 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

It’s Valentine’s weekend, and while in my opinion this is one of those holidays driven by greeting-card companies, restaurants and flower shops, it’s still a wonderful holiday and fun for lovers, young and old. I have some celestial suggestions to make this year’s Valentine’s weekend special.

How about this? After a wonderful candlelit dinner, may I suggest a great way to top off your celebration is to drive to a dark spot, preferably in the countryside, park the car, turn on some soft music and go outside and gaze at the night sky. Make sure you’ve thought ahead and have an extra winter coat and thick blankets in the car. Really do it right and have some reclining lawn chairs in the trunk so you can relax and snuggle under the celestial theater of love.

The old reliable for lovers is the full moon, but unfortunately, it’s not happening for this year’s Valentine’s Day. Also, the bright planet Venus, named after the Roman goddess of love, is also a no-show, so you’ll have to be a little more creative. Start out with this as a warm-up. The brightest “star” in the early evening is actually the planet Jupiter, beaming away in the southeastern sky. It’s the largest planet of our solar system, more than 88,000 miles in diameter. Look into your sweetie’s eyes and say that your love is vaster than Jupiter. Don’t mention, though, that Jupiter is basically a big ball of gas.

(Mike Lynch)

Next, show your significant other the bright star Betelgeuse (pronounced “beetle-juice”), in the mighty constellation Orion the Hunter. It’s not all that far away from Jupiter this year in the southern heavens. Just look for the three bright stars that make up Orion’s belt. Betelgeuse is a bright reddish star to the upper left of the belt. It marks the right armpit of the nocturnal hunter, not exactly in the spirit of Valentine’s!

Betelgeuse (Mike Lynch)

Betelgeuse is still a great Valentine’s star, though, because it’s a super red giant star, about 600 light-years away, with just one light-year equaling nearly 6 trillion miles. Not only is it a red star, but it’s really perfect because it beats like a giant cosmic heart. Every six years it goes from about 500 million miles in diameter to well over 700 billion miles. Even at its smallest, Betelgeuse is way bigger than our sun, which isn’t even a million miles in diameter. In fact, you could fit at least 160 million of our suns inside Betelgeuse. By the way, our Earth is only about 8,000 miles across. Feeling small?

Betelgeuse is so huge that if you were to put it in our solar system in place of our sun, it would swallow the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, possibly reaching out to Jupiter! Our Valentine star Betelgeuse is nearing the end of its life. It won’t die of a broken heart, but within a few million years it’ll suddenly and violently explode, what astronomers call a supernova explosion. No one knows for sure exactly when that’ll happen, but when it does Betelgeuse could temporarily be as bright as a full moon.

(Mike Lynch)

One more nice Valentine in the night sky is rising in the east, just above the horizon. It’s a formation of stars that resembles a backward question mark rising on its side. That’s the chest and head of the constellation Leo the Lion. The love angle here is twofold. If you see the constellation as a lion, you can say that it symbolizes that you’re the “king or queen of the beasts” in the jungle of love. If you’re not sure about that one, and I can’t say I blame you, just tell the love of your life that the backward question mark is a sign that there’s no question about your future together. OK, that’s another reach!

After you enjoy the Valentine’s wonders of the night sky that I’ve humbly suggested, the rest is up to you. Make it heavenly!

Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and retired broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis/St. Paul. He is the author of “Stars: a Month by Month Tour of the Constellations,” published by Adventure Publications and available at bookstores and adventurepublications.net. Mike is available for private star parties. You can contact him at mikewlynch@comcast.net.

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The word community is taking on new significance in these days of Twin Cities demonstrations against some government agents. Here are three books, fiction and nonfiction, that approach the idea in different ways.

“Lobizona” is a young adult novel chosen for the St. Paul Public Library’s Read Brave citywide book club. (Courtesy)

“Lobizona”: by Romina Garber (Wednesday Books, free while supplies last)

Romina Garber

When Romina Garber’s young adult fantasy was published to acclaim from readers and critics in 2020, the Argentinian author couldn’t have known how prescient her story about an immigrant girl would be.

“Lobizona,” Spanish for female werewolf, is so timely it was chosen by St. Paul Library staff as the new title for Read Brave St. Paul, the public library’s annual citywide book club that invites teens, families and community members to read the same book and have conversations about its meaning in our lives.

The story begins with teenager Manuela “Manu” Azul hiding in an apartment in Miami with her mother and adopted grandmother. Manu and her mother are immigrants and she’s used to hiding under the bed when ICE does sweeps of the neighborhood. She’s not allowed outside the building and she must always wear sunglasses to hide her astonishing eyes that have star-shaped silver pupils and cast a yellow glow. She’s lonely and tired of being a virtual prisoner.

When Manu’s mother is captured by ICE agents, Manu escapes, ending up in a magical world in the Everglades she’s dreamed about since she was 13. In this world girls are witches (brujas) and boys are werewolves (lobizones). At their elite school the students play a game like soccer during which the boys have the ball, but the witches can interfere by using their powers to make the field icy or create a wind that foils the opposition team. Manu upsets their ordered society when her friends discover she is a hybrid, both human and werewolf. If her identity is discovered by the adults, she could be executed.

The story, based on Venezuelan folktales, is exciting and thought-provoking. Will Manu’s physical prowess work for or against her in this magical world? Will her deceptions hurt her best friends? Most important, she has always felt an outsider and now she’s surrounded by friends who look like her. For the first time she feels she belongs. But at what price?

This elite school is inside a giant tree. There are huge flowers and little worm-like creatures that attach themselves to basket handles and bite. Manu has found a home, but in the human world her mother languishes in a detention facility and her father, the head of a criminal enterprise, is known among her friends as a rebel who has disappeared and is assumed dead. There are conversations among the teens about why they live under so many rules based on gender. Will they break their long traditions as Manu’s journey mirrors the real struggles faced by those navigating borders seen and unseen, searching for belonging, safety and home?

Maureen Hartman, St. Paul Public Library director, explains in an online letter why this book was selected for Read Brave: “(The novel) takes place amid unprecedented federal immigration enforcement that is causing harm, fear, and unimaginable loss for many in our community … It focuses on a story of immigration, power, and belonging – themes that, in ways we could not have foreseen, are now unfolding with intensity in our own neighborhoods. Read Brave exists to leverage the power of stories to build empathy and community …”

Free copies of the novel, in English and Spanish, are available while supplies last at St. Paul public libraries. Romina Garber will participate in a free panel discussion with young readers at 5:30 p.m. March 5 at Arlington Hills Library, 1200 Payne Ave., St. Paul.

Teaser quote: “I scream as all my joints crack at once, the bones of my skeleton breaking off. My spine curves as it elongates, and fangs pierce my gums, my skull tingling as my hair grows out. I stare at my hands in horror as my nails curl into claws …”

(Courtesy of the author)

“The Trestle”: by James A. Engen (Independently published, $25)

Engen, whose family has four generations of roots around Payne and Bush avenues, subtitles his novel “A Story from the East Side of Saint Paul.”

The Trestle, he writes, is a bridge relic left behind from the old streetcar line that ran through the East Side neighborhood, about 120 feet long and just shy of twelve feet wide. It was the place where “kids smoked their first cigarette, drank their first beer, or found somebody to fight.” It was the dividing line between the East Side’s two rival public high schools: Johnson to the north and Harding to the south.

At the center of this coming-of-age novel is Mitch Dawson, whose family lived in the farthest northeast corner of St. Paul, next to Hillcrest Country Club. Mitch and his gang of friends are in their last year of junior high as their story begins, doing what boys do at that age. There’s Manny, Zitzs and EZ, who has a way with the girls; Izzy, an abused boy who hides his family’s secrets, and Gloria, as good at sports as the boys and so fierce nobody teases her little sister about her stutter.

The boys taunt giant, unkempt sisters they call Snag (because of her teeth) and Crime Scene (because she’s always in trouble). They caddy at Hillcrest County Club and meet the owners, the rich Getz brothers. When the boys aren’t playing hockey or baseball they fool around in the creek, attend the Winter Carnival and listen in on the adults’ conversations. In a particularly tender chapter, Ike’s mother bonds with the other moms as she tells of her husband’s abuse and women’s secrets are shared.

As the story progresses, the kids grow physically and in their relationships. The boys start getting interesting looks from girls as they travel to the Iron Range and other Minnesota locations to play sports.

In the end, there is a funeral nobody wants to attend, but Mitch doesn’t care because he has finally realized his feelings for Gloria.

“The Trestle” embraces a tight-knit community, with moms and dads trying their best to raise their kids right. The women are always ready to donate spaghetti and meatballs for events and the men help one another work on their cars.

Teaser quote: “To the Minnesota hockey world, Phalen Playground was considered the cradle of East Side hockey. A lot of great players came from the Phalen neighborhood specifically, but there was a lot of great hockey being played all over the East Side – up at Hayden Heights and playgrounds like Lockwood, Prosperity, Wilder, Hazel Park, and Conway.”

“Origin Story: Fort Road/West Seventh Street, Township/City of Saint Paul, Territory/State of Minnesota”: by Joseph Landsberger (Independently published, $40 softcover).

Continuing books about neighborhoods, Landsberger gives us a masterful researching job in this 400-page, vertical format paperback that holds everything you ever wanted to know about Seventh Street. It is aptly subtitled “From the Glacial Age Forward.”

The author takes us into the neighborhoods house by house, business by business. In a timeline that begins with the Native American population, he tells of the pioneers who settled this area of St. Paul.

Among the chapters are Minnesota Identity, Red River Oxcarts, Upper Landing Industry, settlements of Germans, Bohemians, Italians and Irish, schools and brothels, Shepherd Road, West End Art and Entertainment and Community Reporter newspaper.

With 1,083 images, this treasure should be in every local library. Written by an author who was about 80 when a revised edition was published in late 2025, it is a marvel of local history that can be read in sections with information that might surprise you about one of St. Paul’s busiest thoroughfares.

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In Minneapolis and St. Paul, as in cities across the United States, immigration raids became a massive, unprecedented spectacle of masked men clad in tactical gear — Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents shielded by body armor and a bureaucracy that is willing to use brutal tactics and to misrepresent their activities and the people they engage. ICE agents arrive unbidden and largely unwelcome, without names, wielding lethal weapons and tear gas cannisters, and pepper-spraying neighborhoods where fear has become epidemic as it eviscerates trust in the federal government.

ICE’s anonymity is not incidental — it is a tool of domination that reshapes the moral landscape and dampens the humanity of those who use it.

When power and anonymity combine

Social psychologists have studied what happens when power combines with concealment.

The Stanford Prison Experiment, conducted in 1971 by Dr. Philip Zimbardo, starkly illuminated disturbing realities. In it, college students were assigned to act as guards — or prisoners. The guards, who wore uniforms and mirrored sunglasses, devolved into cruelly treating the other students playing the role of prisoners. The guards’ anonymity unleashed aggression in them.

Stripped of their personal identifiers and identity, guards stopped seeing prisoners as people and went on to treat them without the humanity that all deserve.

The experiment ended early because the researchers became alarmed by how fast previously ordinary people devolved into violence when shielded from accountability.

ICE operations perilously mirror these psychological dynamics on a national scale. Masked agents with obscured names and covered faces drive in vehicles with darkly tinted windows, creating a hostile environment that suppresses empathy they might otherwise retain and levels of accountability that might restrain them. Unlike in Zimbardo’s lab, these are not simulations — we witness in plain view across our community and via screens the jarring consequences of ICE actions: abuses, deportations, family separations, and traumas that ripple through homes, communities, and across generations.

Supporters of ICE actions might argue that agents should not identify themselves because their anonymity protects them from retaliation. But in a democracy, protection of agents’ identity must be balanced carefully with accountability to the public and to potential victims whom they may wrong.

Why should ICE agents be masked when other law enforcement officers are not?

In this country, unlike in dictatorships, people expect to be able to identify law enforcement officers by sight and by badge number. When ICE agents can detain, harass, deport, injure, shoot and, as we have seen, even kill without identifying themselves, they have been granted too much power in the conflicts that they are waging against immigrants and citizens alike. It is not justice when ICE agents operate behind masks that obscure their identity and unleash base instincts of cruelty and violence rather than upholding values of protecting and serving that are expected of other law enforcement.

Mission gone awry

The Stanford Prison Experiment ended after merely six days.

ICE’s misadventures and cruelty are ongoing and have spiraled out of control here and elsewhere. Society and elected representatives with moral compasses and courage must end this dubious, deadly, costly and unnecessary mission that has gone awry and that has employed tactics that dehumanize immigrants, citizens, and erode the humanity of ICE agents themselves.

William N. Robiner is a professor in the Departments of Medicine and Pediatrics and director of Health Psychology at the University of Minnesota Medical School.

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