Who’s paying for Big Tech’s energy binge? You might be!

If cooling your house down during this summer’s heat wave is costing you an arm and a leg, you can blame AI.

Tech companies plan to spend trillions to feed AI’s voracious appetite for energy, but normal Americans are eating the cost of that increased demand.

Earlier this summer, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman declared that a “significant fraction of the power on Earth” should be dedicated to running AI. OpenAI and its competitors have been raising and spending mind-boggling sums on data centers capable of powering their near-future AI plans, which stand to make the world’s richest companies even richer. Unfortunately, all of that energy consumption is starting to trickle down to the average American.

Compared to last year, consumers paid 5.5% more for electricity in 2025, a rate increase that outstrips inflation during the same period. The average American paid $144 in 2024 for their electric bill, compared with $122 in 2021, and those increases are expected to speed up.

Myriad factors contribute to rising electricity costs, but the major trends behind the energy use spike aren’t hard to spot. “Energy experts did expect electricity demand to rise, given the drivers of U.S. economic growth,” according to a recent report from ICF, an energy consulting firm. “However, the rapid spikes due to data center use and industrial demand were not predicted to occur as quickly as they have.” 

The report notes that after two decades of consistent energy use, the country’s appetite for energy is suddenly spiking, sending electricity costs up, too. “Rising electricity demand is expected to lead to higher electricity bills for Americans,” the report states, noting that residential rates are expected to go up by 15% to 40% over the next five years. By 2050, electricity bills could double in some markets.

While the national average residential price for a kilowatt hour of electricity rose 6.5% from May 2024 to May 2025, Americans aren’t feeling those cost increases evenly. In Maine, that price increase was a whopping 36%. In Connecticut, residential rates rose by 18%, while Utah residents saw their bills go up by 15%. Rates only dropped or hovered around their existing price in five states.

New problems, fewer solutions

Many obvious solutions that could offset soaring power costs are off the table now. In the early months of President Trump’s second term, his administration moved swiftly to undercut U.S. investment in wind and solar, delete clean energy tax credits, and slash other climate adaptation measures set in motion in President Biden’s signature legislative package, the Inflation Reduction Act.

Trump’s decision to steer the U.S. economy away from renewable energy and back toward fossil fuels is too recent to be reflected in your home energy bill, but those reversals do mean that relief is not in sight unless something else changes dramatically.

That change is unlikely to come from tech companies, which are scrambling to build more electricity-guzzling data complexes before their competitors can. Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple, and OpenAI are all pouring billions into new data centers that will dot the country. Amazon is even trying to build its own set of small nuclear reactors to meet its power needs—an option that many Washington state residents aren’t thrilled about. 

Data centers often come packaged with grand promises about revitalizing local economies, but once built, they don’t actually require much of a human workforce to operate. Communities are also becoming more aware of environmental concerns associated with inviting Amazon or OpenAI to town, though those worries are likely to do little to slow down tech companies.

“You should expect OpenAI to spend trillions of dollars on infrastructure in the not-very-distant future,” Altman told reporters on Thursday. “And you should expect a bunch of economists to say, ‘This is so crazy; it’s so reckless,’ and whatever. And we’ll just be, like, ‘You know what? Let us do our thing.’”