APRIL 1, 2026 |This week in the newsletter: Federal bills, Texas SB 6, and data center commitments lacking disclosure.
BIANCA GIACOBONE| “We need a federal moratorium on AI data centers.”
That was Sen. Bernie Sanders last week, introducing a new Data Center Moratorium Act alongside Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The bill would institute an “immediate” federal freeze on new data centers until national safeguards ensure that AI is safe, does not cause job losses, and does not increase energy prices, among other things.
It was only a matter of time before a bill like this would land, especially after the call Sen. Sanders put out in December to stop data center construction. It’s a federal catch-up to what has been happening a lot on a state and local level; as we noted in a previous newsletter, 12 states, including Georgia and New York, have called for similar moratoriums and many communities have actually enacted them.
The bill is strict and combative, listing both the net worth of the tech tycoons in charge of global AI developments and the many instances in which they have expressed concern about the technology they are developing.
“Mark my words. AI is far more dangerous than nukes,” the bill quotes Elon Musk as saying. And, “humanity is about to be handed almost unimaginable power, and it is deeply unclear whether our social, political, and technological systems possess the maturity to wield it,” according to Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic.
As such, the bill has virtually zero chance of passing as-is, especially given that most Democrats have already skipped endorsing Sanders’ December push for a moratorium.
But the legislation gives extra momentum to the growing public and policymaker concerns around energy costs and utility bill protections. On Thursday last week, Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Republican Sen. Josh Hawley sent the Energy Information Administration a letter asking it to do a “comprehensive, annual energy-use disclosures” on data centers, for example.
This momentum is making it more likely that ratepayer protections actually take shape at the federal level. We already see many bills that are trying to bring some regulation to the explosive growth of the AI data center sector. Even the bills that are pushing for deregulation instead, like Sen. Tom Cotton’s DATA Act, discussed in more depth below, do so by claiming that they have the best interests of ratepayers at heart.
In 2026 alone, we have at least six, presented here in chronological order by introduction date:
The Decentralized Access to Technology Alternatives (DATA) Act of 2026, from Sen. Cotton (R-Ark.): It would exempt off-grid data centers from most federal utility regulations, including rate regulation and reliability standards. That’s purportedly to encourage developers to go off-grid and bring relief to the grid and ratepayers.
The Preventing Rate Inflation in Consumer Energy (PRICE) Act, from Reps. Menendez (D-N.J.) and Casar (D-Texas): It would require new data centers to generate all the electricity they consume, and mandates 75% clean energy use by 2035 and 100% by 2040. The bill’s companion is the Data Center Transparency Act, which would mandate data centers to monitor and report energy and water use, as well as emissions.
The Stopping Hikes In Electricity from Large Load Demands (SHIELD) Act, from Reps. Levin (D-Calif.) and Castor (D-Fla.): It would amend federal utility policy, creating a separate rate class for facilities using over 75 megawatts and requiring them to shoulder the cost of grid upgrades, among other things.
The Power for the People Act, from Sen. Van Hollen (D-Md.): It would direct states to evaluate the need to create new rate classes for data centers, and direct FERC to create a rule mandating data centers to pay for local transmission upgrades, among other things.
The Guaranteeing Rate Insulation from Data Centers (GRID) Act, from Sen. Hawley (R-Mo.) and Blumenthal (D-Conn.): It would mandate that data centers over 20 MW get electricity from off-grid generation. It would also require grid-connected data centers to prove they’re not increasing local electricity costs, or pay "rate effect credits” to offset costs if they can’t.
The Data Center Community Act, from Rep. Watson Coleman (D-NJ): It authorizes a federal study on the economic and environmental impacts of data centers, with a focus on vulnerable communities.
This collection of bills shows how AI data center development is already impacting power markets across the U.S., and how affordability has become a defining political issue in the AI–energy debate.
These are all topics that we will discuss in depth at Transition-AI, which will take place in San Francisco, on April 13-14. One particularly relevant session is a fireside chat on day two with Charles Hua, founder and executive director of Power Lines; he’ll talk about how rising power costs intersect with rate design, cost allocation, and regulatory oversight, and why data centers are increasingly at the center of those discussions.
You can find the full agenda here and register here. Newsletter subscribers can take 20% off their ticket with the code LATITUDE-20.
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This chart from a recent Jefferies report shows that about 43% of total reported utility data center commitments lack firm disclosure of binding financial or contractual obligations. The figure, along with the rest of the report, highlights how sensitive reported data center power commitment totals are to the definitions of the word “commitment.”
MAEVE ALLSUP | When Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 6 into law last summer, rewriting the rules for how large loads connect to and operate on the grid, it made ERCOT the country’s most visible laboratory for managing data center load growth.
The core philosophy of SB6 is simple, and has echoed as far as major tech companies and utilities, as well as the White House: Data centers should pay their own way for grid upgrades, and stand down during emergencies so that ratepayers don’t end up footing the bill.
But as the rulemaking process for SB6 has unfolded, it’s becoming clear just how far apart regulators and the AI industry are when it comes to the price of grid admission. Other markets around the country are closely watching the back-and-forth between Texas and developers over the size of financial commitments, and whether to grandfather in existing projects, explained Anne Liu, the research lead for ERCOT at Aurora Energy Research.
“I think this is going to significantly impact how other markets are going to [manage large loads],” she said. While ERCOT isn’t directly regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, federal policies often reflect the trends that start in Texas’ islanded grid, she added.
AP | Crusoe has announced a 900 MW AI factory campus in Abilene, Texas, for Microsoft, which took over the project after OpenAI backed away.
*Bloomberg | Microsoft is in talks with Chevron and investment fund Engine No. 1 over a long-term deal for a $7 billion gas power plant in West Texas.
*Bloomberg | Meta is funding seven new Entergy gas-fired plants for its data center in Louisiana. It is also increasing investment from $1.5 billion to $10 billion for its data center in El Paso, Texas.
West Virginia Division of Economic Development| Google has acquired land in Putnam County, in West Virginia, and received initial approvals for a large-scale project.
Latitude Media| Executives at Fermi America and Google disagreed over issues like data centers going off-grid and renewable energy’s ability to meet massive load growth at CERAWeek.
Latitude Media | Executives from some of the largest tech and utility companies seemed to come to CERAWeek with a shared mission: change the narrative that data centers will spike U.S. electricity bills.
Venture Beat | ThinkLabs AI, an Nvidia-backed digital twin startup for the grid, raised a $28 million Series A round led by Energy Impact Partners.
Latitude Media | Data center demand response, while likely useful for getting onto the grid more quickly, isn’t necessarily the most effective lever for lowering wholesale power prices in PJM, according to an analysis by BloombergNEF.
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Recommended Podcast
Open Circuit | Brian Janous of Cloverleaf Infrastructure helps the hosts unpack the debate over grid utilization vs grid expansion, trying to figure out whether a better utilization of the grid can actually unlock 100 GW of capacity.
Where the Internet Lives | Blaise Agüera y Arcas, CTO of Technology and Society at Google, digs into the promise, and the details, of Project Suncatcher, an endeavor to someday scale machine learning in outer space.
Events and Resources
Latitude Media’s Stephen Lacey will interview Partha Ranganathan, VP, Engineering Fellow at Google, to explore Google’s approach to efficiency in AI data centers, in a special live taping of the podcast Where the Internet Lives, tomorrow, on April 2, 2026. You can register here.
This S&P Global report looks at North American PPA activity, with hyperscalers driving the majority of it, accounting for 76% of volumes in Q4 2025 and 90% in early 2026.
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