Your electricity bill is subsidising someone else's AI.

Another manic Monday!

Hello, Curse and Coffee friends,

Today, we explore AI’s effect on your electricity bill.

Hit reply and let us know what you think (we read all of your kind words).

Coffee at the ready…

The take: US utilities cut secret deals with data centres. Households who can't say no pick up the tab.

What happened: The EIA reported the strongest four-year electricity demand growth since 2000. Data centres are the cause.

Why it matters: Residential prices up 40% since 2020. Commercial up 3%. Industrial down 2%.

What to watch: PJM's September auction deadline, when tech giants must fund $15 billion in new plants or risk blackouts.

Regulators call you a "captive ratepayer." You might call it something else.

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Utilities profit from capital spending.

Data centres offer a massive, predictable load. So utilities cut deals: lower rates, priority connections, costs spread to everyone else.

You can't shop around.

Data centres can threaten to build elsewhere. That's leverage you'll never have.

Same story in Ireland.

Data centres now consume 22% of the country's electricity. Friends of the Earth called for a moratorium.

The EU is drafting efficiency rules for Q1 2026.

Trump now wants tech to fund 15-year contracts. Pay whether they use the power or not.

Pro: Data centres bring jobs, tax revenue, and AI leadership. Higher costs push investment abroad.

Con: Households can't switch providers. Spreading infrastructure costs to captive ratepayers is a subsidy by another name.

Our read: The debate isn't whether AI needs power. The question is whether retirees in Ohio should subsidise Meta's GPU farms.

EIA Short-Term Energy Outlook (January 2026) — Data centre demand accounts for ~30% of commercial electricity growth in 2026, rising to 50% by 2027. Virginia, Georgia, and Ohio are the hotspots.

PJM fell 6.6 gigawatts short in December. Six nuclear plants of missing power.

Source: PJM / CNN

[Report] NPR: One Ohio couple's bills went from 12¢ to 19¢ per kWh since 2020. Their neighbourhood now has 130 data centres.

[Analysis] CNBC: Microsoft pledged to "pay its way" on Tuesday. Trump posted about making tech pay on Monday. Timing purely coincidental.

[Opinion] TechPolicy.Press: "We're essentially allowing data centres to jump the queue while ordinary customers and decarbonisation efforts are left waiting."

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