With New Jersey residents facing steep hikes in electricity bills, some lawmakers are aiming to become a growing industry chosen to cut costs: Artificial Intelligence Data Centers.
Congressman Dave Bailey (D-Salem) sponsored a bill that would create a rate structure known as tariffs for new data centers built around the state.
“We have to develop a strategy. What are the potential negative impacts of this type of technology, the potential negative impacts, especially on the increase in energy use that arises due to rate wages and data center use?” Bailey said.
New Jersey and the other 12 states provided by the PJM Regional Grid are dealing with a surge in electricity costs as electricity demand exceeds supply. New Jersey state leaders have spent months blaming the PJM interconnections to slowly move the new power sources into the grid.
Bailey's bill highlights tensions over the energy supply that the fast-growing AI industry is creating.
Data centers can use huge amounts of electricity. Dutch company Nebius Group announced plans to build a new data center in Vineland earlier this year. That's about a quarter of the electricity produced by PSEG's Hope Creek Nuclear Power Plant in Salem County.
Other states have adopted similar measures to Bailey's bill, according to Abraham Silverman, an assistant research and scholar at the Ralph O'Connor Sustainable Energy Institute at Johns Hopkins University.
“No one knows how much electricity these data centers use. So, it's about making sure that consumers are protected, regardless of the amount of electricity that the data centers use, because the right regulators should have done so.”
Republican lawmakers are skeptical. Rep. Christian Barranco (R-Morris) said the bill looks good on paper, but it doesn't have a very practical impact as data centers already rely on their own power sources and rely on a practice called co-location. He argues that by focusing on providing new power sources online, the state will provide better services.
Business and industry lobbying groups have opposed Bailey's bill, saying it's unfairly calling scapegoat AI and blocking investment in the growing sector.
“Data centers are large energy users, but also large manufacturers, as well as large hospitals. If we are trying to achieve economic growth, we need to make sure that society needs to do. “More nuclear power plants [and] We consider natural gas to be a very clean and efficient energy source. Also, if we do it right, it can be put online immediately. ”
The report was made possible in part by a company for public broadcasting, a private company funded by Americans.
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