Two US senators on Thursday fired the latest salvo against data centers and their use of power. Leaders Josh Hawley and Elizabeth Warren sent a letter to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) asking it to collect data on energy use in data centers – and how that use affects the grid.
The senators urged the EIA “to establish a mandatory annual reporting requirement for data centers and other large loads,” they wrote in the letter, seen by TechCrunch. “As electricity demand growth continues to accelerate after years of stagnation, the lack of reliable, quality data on large-scale energy use poses a serious threat to effective grid planning and oversight.” Wired was the first to report on the book.
The letter is not the first step by politicians to try to impose new regulatory requirements on data centers. Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Wednesday she will introduce legislation that would halt the construction of new data centers until Congress reaches an agreement on how to regulate AI.
Energy consumption by data centers has exploded in recent years. Google’s data centers, for example, doubled their usage between 2020 and 2024. The trend is unlikely to change in the near future. By 2035, planned new data centers will nearly triple the industry’s energy demand.
The EIA is a government agency tasked with collecting and analyzing data related to the energy system – sort of like the Census Bureau for the grid. It was established in 1977 under the Department of Energy after the oil shock of the early 1970s.
For decades, the EIA has collected a wealth of information about US energy use, including costs, sources of production, and energy efficiency programs. It also tracks how different sectors use energy, although it only focuses on four broad categories: residential, commercial, industrial, and transportation.
Hawley and Warren also asked the EIA to collect more granular information on data centers, including how energy consumption differs between AI computing tasks and traditional cloud services.
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Members of parliament have specific requests about what that data should look like, including the hour, year, and peak energy and number of billing companies. They also want to know about any grid upgrades required by the addition of large new loads, how those upgrades are paid for, and whether data center customers participate in demand response programs, where utilities pay large users to reduce their usage for a period of time.
The letter cites EIA administrator Tristan Abbey, who said in December that the agency would be a “key player” in gathering data on data center energy demand. Hawley and Warren requested that the agency respond to their letter by April 9.
It is possible that the process is already underway, although the EIA has not been shared publicly if so. Changes to the EIA study must go through the Office of Management and Budget process, which requires a period of public comment.
“We get a lot of requests for analysis. We get a lot of requests for a real new product,” Abbey said at a public event in December. “It probably takes about two years to launch a new survey from scratch. But there are authorities in place where you can avoid the two-year process by doing a little research, but it can be a sharp sign.”
