The US House of Representatives passed the “Curb AI Electricity Bill Transfer” Act, and the incremental cost of “electricity in front of the meter” in data centers was gradually implemented

The Zhitong Finance App learned that the US House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed legislation aimed at protecting Americans from paying electricity costs for data centers by an overwhelming vote of 417 to 3. The bipartisan Ratepayer Protection Act (H.R. 9340) has passed through the Republican leadership's fast track of “suspending rules of procedure” — a process usually used for uncontested legislation and requires a two-thirds majority to pass — and the bill has now been transferred to the Senate.

The background of the vote is that lawmakers are under increasing pressure: the wave of data center construction driven by the AI race has been partly attributed to the sharp rise in energy costs. According to reports, the bill was proposed by Colorado Republican Representative Gabe Evans (Gabe Evans). He himself is in a fiercely competitive election campaign. In recent weeks, many Republican lawmakers facing re-election pressure have joined the coalition.

What was written in the bill, and what steps did it take

It seems that the boundaries of its effectiveness are much narrower than the number of votes. The Act amends the Utility Regulatory Policy Act of 1978 (PURPA) to provide state regulators with a set of federal reference standards: encouraging states to establish rules to ensure that “heavy duty users”, including large data centers, pay for additional power generation costs rather than passing the costs on to consumers.

According to the Evans Office and the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the trigger threshold is a single user's electricity demand of 100 megawatts or more, covering all incremental costs of power generation, transmission, and distribution upgrades; heavy duty users must also provide financial guarantees before investing in utilities to prevent the costs from falling on existing users after the project shrinks or moves out. The key is the wording — the bill requires states to “consider” this standard; it is not mandatory to adopt it; it only requires states to hold hearings on it within two years after entry into force. It neither prohibits nor restricts the construction of any data center.

The legislative process is moving fast: it was jointly proposed by members of the two parties in June of this year, passed by a full 52-0 vote in the Energy and Commerce Committee on July 21, and passed 417 to 3 on September 16 under the procedure of suspending the rules. This is the first data center bill passed by the 119th Congress, and is likely one of the last pieces of legislation to be considered before the November 3 midterm elections.

The real hurdle is in the Senate. The companion bill S.5028 proposed by Ohio Republican Senator Jon Husted (Jon Husted) has not even been scheduled for a committee hearing, and only one co-signer is Alabama Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville (Tommy Tuberville). According to reports, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (John Thune) said the bill may pass before the midterm elections, but it can only go through the “consensus” procedure — the Senate's agenda is full this month, and as long as one senator opposes it, this timeline will collapse.

Resistance is already emerging: New Mexico Democratic Senator Martin Heinrich (Martin Heinrich) called it a “cover,” while Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (Chuck Schumer) made no promises, only saying “nothing can be done unless it is carried forward in a bipartisan manner.”

Impact on tech giants: the real constraint is not a bill, it's time

What does this bill actually mean for Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Meta? The key conclusion is that it mainly changes not the price of electricity, but the certainty of cost attribution and the schedule of electrification.

The first level is “voluntary” to “standard.” According to information released by the White House and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), on March 4, 2026, seven AI and hyperscale cloud vendors, Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, and xAI signed a “Ratepayer Protection Pledge” (Ratepayer Protection Pledge) at the White House, committing five obligations: to build, introduce, or purchase all the electricity required for data centers and bear the costs; pay for the upgrade of additional power transmission infrastructure; pay at the agreed rate regardless of whether electricity is actually used; invest at the agreed rate Local recruitment and training; cooperating with grid operators to enhance resilience. According to the official Pledge page, the number of signatories has increased to 317 organizations (207 electric cooperatives, 71 utility companies, 40 data center developers), and 23 governors have joined, covering 80% of the nation's electricity supply and involving 263 million Americans.

In other words, the top seven companies have already voluntarily promised to cover their own infrastructure costs; the actual effect of the bill is to turn “voluntary” into a “federal reference standard.” For those who have signed up, the marginal additional cost is limited; the real change is happening to a third party — a company that has not signed a promise or relies on renting computing power from a third party data center, and will face a rate environment that was previously negotiable and supported by federal texts thereafter. According to previous media questions, the promise does not include fines, penalties, or mandatory compliance mechanisms — retail electricity prices are ultimately determined by state regulators in rate cases; it is this “dental” gap that the bill wants to fill.

The second tier is more realistic: financial guarantees and “you have to pay if you don't use it” capacity fees put capital expenses ahead of time and raised the threshold for latecomers. The bill requires heavy duty users to provide financial guarantees before investing in utilities, which means that cash outflows early; in line with the “pay at the agreed rate regardless of whether electricity is used or not” in the promise, a park that has not yet been fully loaded must also continue to pay for the reserved power generation and transmission capacity. For hyperscale vendors with strong cash flow, this is an affordable definitive cost; for third-party data center developers and computing power leasers with higher leverage, this actually raises the bar.

The third layer is decisive: reliable power access is replacing GPUs and becoming a real bottleneck in AI expansion. According to Goldman Sachs research, US data center electricity demand will rise from 31 gigawatts in 2025 to 66 gigawatts in 2027, and only about 60% of the additional capacity may be put into operation on time — the bottleneck is not chips, but the physical progress of grid-connected queues and grid expansion. According to PJM (America's largest regional power grid covering 13 states and a population of about 65 million) capacity auction data and independent market supervisory agency estimates, its capacity liquidation price increased about 11 times to $329.17 per megawatt-day in two years. Of this, about 63% of the increase was due to data center load, equivalent to about $9.3 billion. Meanwhile, according to Politico, the Republican Senate campaign agency's August memo warned that the data center “is an anchor hanging around Hursted's neck.”

The giants have taken action: from “buying electricity” to “becoming a grid resource”

Rather than waiting for legislation, the tech giants' response has already begun, and the direction is clear — turning electricity from external purchases into their own manageable assets.

On the day the bill was passed, a deal gave the most straightforward footnote. According to Generac's 8-K document submitted to the US Securities Regulatory Commission on September 16, the company signed a transaction agreement with Amazon to issue warrants to Amazon's wholly-owned subsidiary, and can subscribe for up to 1,693,745 common shares (worth about US$340 million) at $200.9266 per share. The ownership conditions depend on the total amount Amazon pays for the backup generator — up to $8 billion; at the same time, the two sides signed a long-term supply agreement, which anticipates the initial delivery of backup generators in 2027 and 2028 The total would amount to $2.4 billion. Generac shares surged more than 28% before the market on Thursday. It is worth noting that Amazon bought a backup generator for the data center — that is, the self-built power supply after the meter. It is the channel that bypasses grid-connected queues and capacity increase fees, and this “escape channel” itself is also driving up the unit cost.

Another path is to exchange flexible loads for grid-connected priority. On the same day, Nvidia, Google, and Emerald AI announced the launch of the AI Energy Management Alliance (AEMA). The first batch of 18 sponsors included Anthropic, Analog Devices, National Grid, AES, Constellation, NRG, and other power and computing power companies. According to the principles disclosed by the Alliance, the idea is to allow data centers to dynamically adjust electricity consumption based on the real-time state of the power grid — transforming large-scale computing power facilities from rigid loads to schedulable power grid resources by migrating computing power loads, releasing energy storage, and using supporting power generation; open a quick approval channel for entities that can provide verifiable flexible electricity use commitments based on risk assessment, and distribute grid connection costs according to actual system benefits. According to reports, the coalition says the move is expected to free up to 100 gigawatts of capacity from existing power systems and save approximately $733 million in system costs for each gigawatt of new AI data centers.

If you look at the two matters on the same day, the logic is complete: legislation is addressing “who pays”, and the industry is solving “how to connect to electricity faster.” For companies like Amazon and Google, the cost of the former is affordable; the latter's time is real money.