POWER Act

Key Points

• This bill requires the Department of Energy to track how much water and electricity large data centers use every year. Data centers are massive buildings filled with computers that need constant power and water to stay cool.
• The government would report on whether these centers use public water systems and if they recycle their water. It also tracks if they generate their own electricity or buy it from the local power grid like a regular home or business.
• The report must show how much it costs to connect these centers to the power grid and who is paying those bills. This helps ensure that regular utility customers are not paying for a private company's expensive setup costs.
• The goal is to protect local water supplies and farmland from being used up by tech companies. Supporters want to make sure the federal government is not helping fund data centers that would not be able to survive on their own.

Impact Analysis

Govbase has not yet run an impact analysis on this legislation.