Democratic Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders and right-wing Governor Ron DeSantis have almost no points of agreement. However, they discovered a shared perspective this year as leading critics of the artificial intelligence sector’s data center expansion.
The collaboration of these two national figures from opposing sides indicates that a political awakening is occurring regarding the AI industry’s influence on electricity costs, grid reliability, and employment opportunities. If this opposition evolves into a substantial bipartisan agreement, it could hinder the industry’s future growth initiatives.
Sanders, I-VT, has proposed a national halt on data center development.
“Honestly, I believe we need to decelerate this process,” Sanders told CNN during a Dec. 28 interview. “It is unacceptable for the oligarchs to inform us that it’s inevitable — you must adjust. What are they suggesting? That they will provide healthcare to everyone? What will happen when people are unemployed?”
Governor DeSantis introduced an AI bill of rights on Dec. 4 aimed at safeguarding local communities’ authority to prevent data center development among other measures. The strong Republican’s initiative might clash with the White House’s agenda, which favors a rapid expansion of AI. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Dec. 11 to curb “excessive state regulation” of AI.
“Our grid is limited. The United States lacks sufficient grid capacity to fulfill the goals of the AI industry,” DeSantis stated about the proposed data centers during an event in The Villages, Florida.
“As more information has emerged, would you want a hyperscale data center in The Villages? Yes or no,” the governor inquired. “I believe most people would say they do not want it.”
DeSantis is nearing the end of his second term as Florida’s governor, and his future political plans remain uncertain. Sanders has indicated that his fourth term as Vermont’s senator will likely be his final one.
Florida and Vermont are not prominent states for data centers. However, soaring utility rates significantly contributed to Democrat Abigail Spanberger’s landslide victory in Virginia’s gubernatorial race this year, located in the world’s largest data center market.
Projected residential electricity rates are expected to rise an average of 4% nationwide in 2026, following a 5% increase in 2025, according to the federal Energy Information Administration.
As the cost of living continues to dominate American politics, how data centers impact local communities is likely to be a crucial issue in the mid-term elections next November.
“We’ve transitioned from an era when data centers were largely regarded as unequivocally beneficial and a driver of economic growth by many politicians and policymakers, to a stage where there’s acknowledgment of shortages,” stated Abe Silverman, who was general counsel for the public utility board in New Jersey from 2019 to 2023 under Democratic Governor Phil Murphy.
“There’s insufficient generation capacity to reliably supply current customers and data centers,” Silverman asserted.
Crisis on the largest grid
The demand shortage is particularly severe on the nation’s largest grid, PJM Interconnection, where data center demand is pushing the system close to its limits. By 2027, the grid will be short by six gigawatts of its reliability standard, as reported by PJM.
This power shortfall is roughly equivalent to the electricity needs of Philadelphia, according to Silverman, who noted that this increases the likelihood of blackouts. “Rather than experiencing a blackout every decade, we might see them more frequently,” he remarked.
“We are currently facing a crisis. PJM has never been this deficient,” said Joe Bowring, president of Monitoring Analytics, which acts as the independent market monitor for PJM.
PJM Interconnection provides service to over 65 million individuals across 13 states in the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest, including key swing states for the mid-term elections like Pennsylvania and Virginia.
The cost to secure power capacity in PJM has surged in recent years, with $23 billion attributed to data centers, according to Monitoring Analytics. These expenses ultimately trickle down to consumers, resulting in a “massive wealth transfer,” the watchdog informed PJM in a November letter.
“I don’t believe we have seen the conclusion of the political ramifications,” remarked Rob Gramlich, president of Grid Strategies, a consulting firm in the power sector.
“With significantly more elections in 2026 compared to 2025, we’ll observe numerous outcomes,” Gramlich noted. “Each politician will claim they have solutions for affordability and that their rivals’ practices would hike prices.”
The shortage will worsen due to Trump’s recent choice to halt all offshore wind farm projects currently under construction along the East Coast, asserted Silverman. This suspension includes the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, a significant 2.6-gigawatt initiative that would contribute to the enormous data center market in northern Virginia.
“By halting a project soon expected to launch, you are directly inflating the electricity costs we all face, and not just by a small margin,” Silverman commented. “This creates a huge additional gap we need to overcome.”
Data centers now encounter resistance on several levels. The PJM watchdog has urged the grid to deny data center requests when it cannot provide adequate power or require them to generate their own energy. Virginia’s utility regulator is now mandating data centers to cover the majority of the expenses for new transmission and generation infrastructure starting in 2027.
Next year, data center developers will likely shift towards constructing more onsite power plants, referred to as co-location, as they attempt to quickly secure power supply from the grid, according to Brian Fitzsimons, CEO of GridUnity, a firm specializing in helping utilities manage connection requests through software.
However, Silverman warned that “co-location” presents issues that will also attract political attention.
“Co-location effectively removes a power generator from the market,” he remarked. “It would be unethical for a scenario to develop where data centers can purchase private power plants, putting the rest of us at a higher risk of blackouts.”
