{"id":235701,"date":"2026-04-25T20:01:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-26T00:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/25\/how-the-ai-driven-data-center-boom-is-leading-to-skyrocketing-energy-bills-for-many-americans\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T00:05:22","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T04:05:22","slug":"how-the-ai-driven-data-center-boom-is-leading-to-skyrocketing-energy-bills-for-many-americans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/25\/how-the-ai-driven-data-center-boom-is-leading-to-skyrocketing-energy-bills-for-many-americans\/","title":{"rendered":"How the AI-driven data center boom is leading to skyrocketing energy bills for many Americans"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/how-ai-driven-data-center-boom-leading-to-skyrocketing-energy-bills\/\">How the AI-driven data center boom is leading to skyrocketing energy bills for many Americans<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/how-ai-driven-data-center-boom-leading-to-skyrocketing-energy-bills\/\">https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/how-ai-driven-data-center-boom-leading-to-skyrocketing-energy-bills\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-04-25 20:01:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.cbsnews.com\">www.cbsnews.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Atlanta\u00a0\u2014 It is a sunny afternoon in Atlanta, Georgia, but inside Carolyn Kayne&#8217;s 3,000-square-foot home, it is cold.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m walking around in a ski suit trying to stay warm in the winter,&#8221; Kayne told CBS News.<\/p>\n<p>It is just one of the ways Kayne has tried to beat her skyrocketing electric bills, which have almost doubled in two years.<\/p>\n<p>She has now turned off her heat and water, leaving much of her home hard to live in.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I live in a little apartment in the back,&#8221; Kayne explains.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Patty Durand, founder of the nonprofit advocacy group Georgians for Affordable Energy says Carolyn&#8217;s situation is not unique.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The average bill for an average customer used to be about $150 a month,&#8221; Durand said. &#8220;The average bill now is $225.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>A CBS News analysis found that Georgia Power, the largest energy provider in the state, imposed six rate hikes in the last three years.<\/p>\n<p>During which time, the Vogtle nuclear power plant went online and Georgia saw a boom in data centers. Those data centers, Durand says, came to Georgia for discounted power.<\/p>\n<p>The growing use of artificial intelligence\u00a0<span class=\"link\">has sparked a demand<\/span>\u00a0for data centers. And across the U.S., new data centers are\u00a0<span class=\"link\">driving up utility bills<\/span>\u00a0in at least 13 states, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.<\/p>\n<p>Americans who live near data centers are paying as much as 267% more a month for energy than five years ago, a 2025\u00a0Bloomberg&#8217;s analysis\u00a0determined.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>This week, meanwhile, Maine Gov. Janet Mills\u00a0vetoed\u00a0a bill that would have made her state the first to ban construction of new data centers.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I believe it necessary and important to examine and plan for the potential impacts of large-scale data centers in Maine, as the use of artificial intelligence becomes more widespread,&#8221; Mills said in a statement announcing her reasoning.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Data centers will add billions of dollars to costs to electricity rates in Georgia if we don&#8217;t get better protection than we have right now,&#8221; Durand&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/how-ai-driven-data-center-boom-leading-to-skyrocketing-energy-bills\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How the AI-driven data center boom is leading to skyrocketing energy bills for many Americans&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":235702,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/assets2.cbsnewsstatic.com\/hub\/i\/r\/2026\/04\/25\/0ba9dc8e-3036-4ca1-8de0-84bfecb9fa10\/thumbnail\/1200x630\/3458bdf1c6c1e526e7fa1d76f15edf99\/1777160736023.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-235701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235701"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235701"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":235703,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235701\/revisions\/235703"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}