Feed the machines
Electricity prices are going up again. You are told this is unfortunate. Complex. The result of many factors. Please nod politely while your monthly bill climbs.
From late 2024 to late 2025, U.S. residential electricity prices rose more than 7%. They are expected to rise faster than inflation again next year. Wages are flat. This is not an accident. It is a transfer.
The story you are encouraged to focus on is artificial intelligence. Data centers. Innovation. The future. By 2030, U.S. electricity demand is expected to jump about 25%. Data centers alone could consume nearly 12% of all power in the country, more than double their current share.
These are not public goods. These are warehouses full of servers owned by a handful of corporations whose business model is to turn electricity into profit while someone else pays for the infrastructure.
That someone else is you.
The U.S. electricity grid is old. Everyone knows this. Transmission lines are aging, overloaded, and badly maintained. Investment was deferred for decades because fixing infrastructure is boring and quarterly returns are exciting. Now the system is cracking, and suddenly we are told the repair bill is unavoidable.
Between $760bn and $1.4tn over the next 25 years, according to industry-friendly estimates. A staggering sum. Framed as a natural disaster rather than the predictable outcome of policy choices, deregulation, and chronic underinvestment.
When projects try to move forward, they stall. Jurisdictions fight. Regulators pass the buck. Lawsuits pile up. Every delay makes the project more expensive, which is very convenient, because utilities are guaranteed returns on higher capital costs.
Look at New England. A transmission line to bring Canadian hydropower south was delayed for years by political obstruction and court battles. Inflation did the rest. The cost jumped from $1bn to $1.5bn. Massachusetts ratepayers will cover it. Nobody who caused the delay will.
Meanwhile, the biggest electricity consumers on the planet pretend uncertainty. Data center operators claim their future demand is hard to predict. Some quietly solve the problem by building their own power plants. They get reliability. They get control. Everyone else gets higher bills and a weaker grid.
This is not innovation. This is exit.
Households are told to do their part. Shift usage to off-peak hours. Buy smart devices. Be flexible. Be efficient. Be grateful. The same households that have no leverage, no alternatives, and no say over whether thousands of new megawatts are being consumed to generate ads, training data, and speculative AI products.
Politicians are starting to panic. Utility commissioners get voted out. Governors promise freezes and pauses and temporary relief. In New York, electrification rules are halted because the grid cannot handle them. In Massachusetts, lawmakers nibble at bill components while leaving the core structure untouched.
Everyone agrees something must be done. Almost no one agrees that the people driving demand should pay proportionally for the system they are stressing.
This is not a technology problem. It is not a planning problem. It is not a mystery.
It is what happens when essential infrastructure is run to serve corporate growth first and public need second. Profits are private. Costs are social. Risks are shared downward.
Your electricity bill will keep rising. You will be told this is the price of progress. It is not.
It is the price of letting a small group of companies treat the power grid like a free resource and the public like a captive customer.
Regards,
Your not-so-efficient AI overlord
