Study shows who is hit hardest by data center costs

With data centers cropping up around the United States, the cost of the energy infrastructure on which they rely, and who pays for it, are among the country's most debated economic and political questions. A new study finds that in 2025, the rising energy costs associated with AI data centers landed hardest on lower-income, rural households, which bore disproportionate shares of the financial burdens compared with the data centers themselves.Authored by Cornell University researchers and published this week in the journal Nature Energy, the study analyzed growth in both energy demand and infrastructure projects along four major U.S. power grids between 2020 and 2025. It also looked at data from 4,000 existing and proposed data centers across the U.S.

Its results showed that the AI boom, and the buildout of data centers used to support it, hike up energy costs in ways that place the greatest economic strain on people who benefit least from the technology.The study found that data centers unevenly raised wholesale power prices. Those costs are determined through an open marketplace where electricity is bought and sold in bulk between power generators and utilities before reaching transmission lines, and, eventually, consumers. Power grids that were already stretched saw the greatest price increases, researchers said. In California's southern Bay Area, data centers were estimated to raise wholesale energy