Who Pays for Growth? Evidence from Data Centers and the Grid

Artificial intelligence is driving rapid growth in electricity demand through the expansion of data centers. Meeting this demand requires complementary infrastructure investment, but who pays for that investment depends on the institutions that finance, regulate, and allocate its costs. We study this question by linking facility-level data on data center entry to utility-level data on retail electricity prices, infrastructure investment, operational outcomes, and regulatory rate case proceedings across the United States. Data center entry between 2010 and 2024 increases average retail electricity prices by 2.7%, with effects of 2.1% for residential customers, 2.8% for commercial customers, and 4.2% for industrial customers. These effects are concentrated among investor-owned utilities, where average retail prices rise by 5.6%, while effects are much smaller among publicly-owned utilities and absent among cooperatives. Price increases are also larger in states with deregulated electricity generation. To explain these patterns, we examine utility investment, operations, and rate case outcomes. Data center entry induces real infrastructure and operational responses, including construction work in progress, generation investment, transmission spending, and larger authorized rate bases. But pass-through depends on regulatory environment: vertically integrated utilities in regulated states appear to absorb load growth partly through improved utilization, while utilities in deregulated states exhibit more active cost recovery and greater exposure to system constraints. The results show that the incidence of infrastructure-intensive technological change depends not only on the technology itself, but also on the institutions governing complementary infrastructure investment and cost recovery.