Source: Unite.AI
The U.S. House passed the Ratepayer Protection Act on September 16, 2026, voting 417 to 3 to require state utility regulators to consider standards that make large data center customers pay the full cost of the grid upgrades built to serve them.
House Energy and Commerce Chairman Brett Guthrie of Kentucky, Subcommittee on Energy Chairman Bob Latta of Ohio, and Representative Gabe Evans of Colorado, the bill’s sponsor, announced the vote. The House had taken up the measure on September 15, 2026, when Guthrie moved to suspend the rules and pass it as amended; the chamber then held 40 minutes of debate, ordered a roll-call vote at 6:12 p.m., and postponed further proceedings, according to the bill’s official action history. The recorded vote was completed the following day.
In a joint statement, Guthrie said responsible data center development leads to longer-term investment and broader infrastructure improvements in the communities where centers are built, and that the act ensures the companies building data centers, rather than American families and small businesses, pay for the electricity they use. Latta said communities weighing new data center proposals deserve a clear answer on grid impacts: “American families should not have to pay higher electricity bills so large technology companies can build and operate data centers.” Evans said the legislation makes large data centers pay for the infrastructure they require while giving states flexibility to determine what works best for their communities.
What the Bill Would Require
The bill adds a new federal standard to Section 111(d) of the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978. Under the text reported to the House on September 10, 2026, any rate an electric utility charges a large-load customer must be designed to recover the full, incremental cost of any generation, transmission, or distribution upgrade necessary to serve that customer’s load, including costs that arise if the customer terminates its contract or otherwise stops buying electricity. Before making such an upgrade, the utility must require the customer to provide financial assurances or contributions covering the upgrade’s cost.
The standard defines a large-load customer as a non-residential electric consumer that, on or after the date of enactment, requests or enters an agreement to purchase electricity for one or more facilities used primarily to operate information technology infrastructure and related data-storage and computational systems, with combined peak demand of 100 megawatts or more at a single site or campus. The Congressional Research Service summary of the bill notes that the definition covers facilities such as data centers.
Each state regulatory authority and each nonregulated electric utility would have to begin considering the standard, or set a hearing date, within one year of enactment, and complete its determination within two years. Those obligations would not apply in a state that, before enactment, already implemented a comparable standard, conducted a proceeding to consider one, or whose legislature voted on one. The chairman’s office describes the approach as a federal recommendation that preserves state authority over electricity markets, pointing to what it says 24 states are already doing to protect residential homes and small businesses.
Path Through Committee
Evans introduced the bill on June 18, 2026, for himself and Representative Castor of Florida. The Subcommittee on Energy forwarded it to the full committee by voice vote on June 24, 2026. After markup sessions on July 20 and 21, 2026, the Energy and Commerce Committee ordered the bill reported by a vote of 52 to 0; it was reported with an amendment on September 10, 2026, and placed on the Union Calendar. The sponsors describe the measure as bipartisan.
In the committee’s July 21, 2026 release, Guthrie said the panel had met with the data center industry, major technology companies, state regulators, utilities, and others, and concluded that Congress is uniquely positioned to stand up for the families and communities paying electricity bills. Latta said then that numerous states, including Ohio, already have large-load tariffs in place for data centers.
Sponsor-Cited Context
A one-page summary circulated by the chairman’s office states that the bill codifies the White House’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge from earlier in 2026, under which Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, and xAI, along with more than 300 other organizations ranging from utilities to data center developers, committed to protecting communities from increased costs resulting from data center construction.
The document also argues that, with appropriate guardrails, data center development can support host communities. It cites a three-year freeze on residential rates by Georgia Power; $7 billion in savings over 20 years for customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi under recent large-load data center agreements; a 27 percent decline in residential customers’ share of transmission costs at Dominion Energy in Virginia alongside a 148 percent increase in the share assigned to data centers; a household rate reduction announced by Indiana Michigan Power; and $1.1 billion in data center tax revenue in Loudoun County, Virginia, which it says covered almost 40 percent of the county’s general fund.
Reaction and Next Steps
Representative Veronica Escobar of Texas voted for the bill but called it “the absolute bare minimum that Congress should be doing,” saying in her official statement that if this is as far as Republicans will go to protect American communities, it is a pathetic response to a top priority for communities like hers. She pointed to other data center bills she supports, including the Power for the People Act, which would ensure data centers fully pay their energy and infrastructure costs and create a system to manage their interconnection to the grid; the Ratepayer Bill of Rights Act, which would require public disclosure of large data centers’ electricity and water use, infrastructure costs, and rate impacts; and the AI Data Center Site Selection Transparency Act, which would require developers to disclose planned sites 180 days in advance.
The bill now heads to the Senate, where Latta said he is urging swift consideration so the legislation can be sent to the President’s desk.
