One Affordability Battle After Another: What To Do About the AI-Fossil Fuel Industrial Complex
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-ai-data-centers-electricity-prices/
AI Data Centers Are Sending Power Bills Soaring
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-12-09/nuclear-energy-fossil-fuel-interests-join-forces-against-renewable-energy
How a Nuclear-Fossil Fuel Alliance Is Winning the Fight for Energy Dominance
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“AI Data Centers Are Sending Power Bills Soaring,” Bloomberg News explained in a September analysis of tens of thousands of locations nationwide. In areas near data centers, Bloomberg found wholesale electricity prices jumped as much as 267% above 2020 levels. That’s being passed on to customers.
The power needs of the massive complexes are rapidly driving up electricity bills — piling onto the rising prices for food, housing and other essentials already straining consumers.
Affordability of electricity emerged as a central issue in the 2025 elections, driving unexpectedly large victory margins for candidates running on the issue in states as diverse as New Jersey, Virginia, and Georgia. The New York Times described the results as “the political shocks of data centers and electric bills,” guaranteeing the issue will be front and center through the elections this November. One expert said, “Electricity is the new price of eggs.”
The rising prices, along with concerns about fossil fuel pollution, water resources, and job loss, have driven a rebellion against data centers that is both grassroots and bipartisan. Tens of billions of dollars in data centers were derailed last year. And more than two hundred consumer and environmental groups signed a letter to members of Congress, calling on them “to support a national moratorium on the approval and construction of new data centers.”
So, last fall, the big AI “hyperscalers” like Google, Meta, and Microsoft launched an industry counteroffensive, the AI Infrastructure Coalition.
But the most revealing aspect of the Coalition is that ExxonMobil is a charter member. It’s increasingly clear that the fossil fuel industry sees AI and the data center boom as a lifeline. The industry is already using AI to find and produce more oil more cheaply than ever before. Exxon has been working with Microsoft for years to “generate billions in net cash flow” and expand production by 50,000 barrels per day.
At the same time, “the AI era is giving fracking a second act,” as an October TechCrunch article noted. January datafrom Global Energy Monitor reveal that over the past two years, the U.S. has tripled the number of gas power plants in development “to meet data center demand.”
In 2024, Exxon announced it would get into the business of designing “massive” gas-fired power plants for data centers using its carbon capture and storage technology—but such technology has never been used on a single commercial gas plant here. In October, CEO Darren Woods told investors, “We’re very, very engaged with most of the hyperscalers on the opportunity.”
Meanwhile, NextEra, another Coalition member and the world’s largest electric utility holding company by market capitalization, is planning to build three data centers with Google.
A December Bloomberg expose, “How a Nuclear-Fossil Fuel Alliance Is Winning the Fight for Energy Dominance,” detailed how the two industries have found common cause in supporting Trump and working to block renewables.
And the above is why 15 coal powered electric plant retirements have been postponed.