All these data centers are gonna fry my electric bill … right?

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• 00:01

  NPR.

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  Data centers are getting a lot of heat right now.

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  There are protests against them, cities voting to keep them out.

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  You even have both Bernie Sanders and Ron DeSantis speaking out against data centers.

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  Two men I'm pretty sure wouldn't even agree that you know water is wet.

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  You know, data centers,

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  they are essentially warehouses packed with computers that make cloud computing and AI possible.

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  And there are a lot of different reasons people have for opposing them,

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  like concerns about AI and worries about the tons of water they use.

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  And then there's the fear that data centers will lead to higher electric bills.

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  Electricity prices are up about 7% year over year, way higher than overall inflation.

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  And that's driven in part by this flurry of power-hungry data centers.

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  And the concern is that all the new centers coming online will only drive electric rates even higher.

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  But that is not inevitable.

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  This data center electric bill upcharge is not a guarantee.

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  In fact, it is even possible for data centers to cause power bills to go down.

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  This is The Indicator from PlanetMany.

• 01:18

  I'm Waylon Wong.

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  And I'm Stephen Basaha.

• 01:21

  Today on the show, we look at three possible futures for your power bill.

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