“To ensure that American families are protected from the impacts of data centers on the electric grid, and for other purposes.”
No CRS summary available for this bill.
This section states congressional findings that (1) data centers impose costs on other electricity customers through higher generation costs and necessary investments in electric infrastructure; and (2) those costs should be fully borne by data centers to protect residential and small commercial electricity customers.
This section defines a "data center" in the Federal Power Act (FPA) as a facility (or group of facilities) behind a single point of interconnection that primarily processes, stores, or transmits digital information and has a peak electricity demand exceeding 50 megawatts. It grants the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) sole authority, beginning 90 days after enactment, to approve just and reasonable rates and charges for retail sales of electric energy from covered electric utilities (generally non-exempt sellers of electric energy) to data centers, requiring such rates to fully allocate costs of constructing, upgrading, or expanding transmission, distribution, and generation facilities for data center interconnection and bulk-power system reliability and prohibiting cost-shifting to non-data-center customers (with inapplicability in ERCOT). (As background, the FPA generally reserves retail rate regulation to states; this provision creates a FERC-exclusive carve-out for data center retail sales to ensure they bear their full grid impact costs.) It further expands FERC enforcement and penalty provisions to cover such retail sales, including civil penalties of up to $10 million per day for section 224 violations, and makes conforming amendments.
This section prohibits courts from enforcing predispute nondisclosure clauses against public officials with respect to data center construction. The prohibition applies to claims filed on or after enactment under federal, state, or tribal law and does not supersede state law except to the extent such law prevents its application.
This section directs the EPA Administrator to seek an agreement with the National Academies to (1) assess data centers' environmental and public health impacts—including noise pollution, air pollution, water consumption, water supply, carbon emissions, and waste (including electronic waste); (2) develop mitigation recommendations; and (3) submit a report with the assessment results and recommendations to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works within 180 days of enactment.
This section establishes definitions for purposes of the Act, including—(1) "data center," as a facility or group of facilities behind a single point of interconnection that primarily houses equipment for processing, storing, and transmitting digital information and has a peak electricity demand greater than 50 megawatts; (2) "National Academies," as the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; (3) "predispute nondisclosure clause," as a contract provision agreed to before a lawsuit that prohibits disclosure of conduct, settlements, or contract terms; and (4) "public official," as an elected official of a federal, state, or local government unit at the time a contract is agreed to.