Your Electric Bill Is a Permitting Problem
25th September 2026
The price of electricity in America rose about 30% in five years. Washington has decided the culprit is a building that, for the most part, hasn’t been built yet.
Americans are right to be angry, and both parties are scrambling to respond before the midterms. Data centers are the most visible piece of the energy landscape, so data centers are getting the blame for higher prices. But that view misses the real issue.
To be clear, data centers should pay for the infrastructure built to serve them, and host communities deserve enforceable commitments rather than press releases. But those are questions about allocating cost. None of them create another megawatt, and the reason your bill is going up is that we stopped creating megawatts.
As usual, government is the reason we can’t have nice things.