Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) speaks to reporters outside the Senate Chamber of the U.S. Capitol Building on Oct. 1, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Andrew Harnik | Getty Images
Democratic senators on Monday blamed the White House push to fast track artificial intelligence data centers and its attacks on renewable energy for rising electricity prices in certain parts of the U.S.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and others demanded that the White House and Commerce Department detail what actions they have taken to shield consumers from the impact of massive data centers in a letter sent Monday.
Voters are increasingly feeling the pinch of rising electricity prices. Democrats Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger campaigned on the issue in the New Jersey and Virgina governors’ races, which they won in landslides last week.
The senators took aim at the White House’s relationship with companies like Meta, Alphabet, Oracle, and OpenAI, and the support the administration has shown for the companies’ data center plans.
The Trump administration “has already failed to prevent those new data centers from driving up electricity prices from a surge of new commercial demand,” the senators wrote. They accused the White House of making the problem worse by opposing the expansion of solar and wind power.
The White House blamed the Biden administration and its renewable energy policies for driving up electricity prices in a statement.
President Donald Trump “declared an energy emergency to reverse four years of Biden’s disastrous policies, accelerate large-scale grid infrastructure projects, and expedite the expansion of coal, natural gas, and nuclear power generation,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said.
The tech sector’s AI plans have ballooned in size. OpenAI and Nvidia, for example, struck a deal in September to build 10 gigawatts of data centers to train and run AI applications. This is equivalent to New York City’s peak baseline summer demand in 2024.
The scale of these plans have raised questions about whether enough power is available to meet the demand and who will pay for the new generation that is needed. Renewable energy, particularly solar and energy storage, is the power source that can be deployed the quickest right now to meet demand.
Retail electricity prices in the U.S. increased about 6% on average through August 2025 compared with the same period in 2024, according to the Energy Information Administration. Prices, however, can vary widely by region.
Download the full letter here.
