If your electricity bill has been creeping up lately, there’s a good chance the culprit isn’t just your animatronic Halloween decorations.
Across the country, tech companies are racing to build enormous data centers to power the AI boom. Some of those centers don’t even exist yet, but they’re already driving up the cost of electricity for ordinary people.
In his latest story, Vox climate correspondent Umair Irfan unpacks how speculative energy demand from planned data centers — many of which may never be built — is sending electricity prices soaring for most Americans. Data centers have become the elephant in the room of our collective energy future — and now, at last, consumers are starting to push back against the “land rush” for electricity before it drives household bills even higher.
If Umair’s reporting helps you make sense of it all, please consider supporting our work by becoming a Vox Member.
—Paige Vega, climate editor
