Sanders and DeSantis opposition to data centers is a bad sign for AI

Democratic Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders and right-wing Governor Ron DeSantis disagree on almost nothing. But this year they found common ground as skeptics of the data center boom in the AI ​​industry.

The alignment of two national figures on the left and right indicates that a political showdown is being prepared over the AI ​​industry’s impact on electricity prices, grid stability and the labor market. The opposition could slow down the sector’s development plans if there is broad bipartisan consensus.

Sanders, I-VT, called for a national moratorium on data center construction.

“Frankly, I think you need to slow down this process,” Sanders said. he told CNN In an interview conducted on December 28. “It’s not enough for the oligarchs to tell us it’s coming; you adapt. What are they talking about? Will they guarantee health care to all people? What will they do when people are unemployed?”

Florida Governor DeSantis made a statement AI bill of rights On December 4, the law came into force, which, among other provisions, will protect the right of local communities to block data center construction. The staunch Republican’s proposal could run afoul of the White House, which is trying to scale up artificial intelligence as quickly as possible. President Donald Trump issued an executive order on December 11 to prevent “excessive government regulation” of artificial intelligence.

“We have a limited grid. You don’t have enough grid capacity in the United States to do what they’re trying to do,” DeSantis said of the AI ​​industry’s data center plans at an event in The Villages, Florida.

“As more and more information comes out, do you want a hyperscale data center in the Villages? Yes or no?” the governor asked. “I think most people would say they don’t want that.”

DeSantis is completing his second term as governor of Florida, and his future political ambitions are unclear. Sanders begins fourth term as Vermont senator it will probably be his last.

Florida and Vermont are not big data center states. But rising electricity bills played a key role in Democrat Abigail Spanberger’s landslide victory this year in the governor’s race in Virginia, the world’s largest data center market.

Residential electricity prices are expected to rise an average of 4% nationwide in 2026, following a nearly 5% increase in 2025, according to the federal Energy Information Administration.

With the cost of living at the center of American politics, the impact of data centers on local communities will likely play a role in next November’s midterm elections.

“We’ve gone from a period where data centers were sort of seen as a complete benefit and engine of growth by a lot of elected officials and policymakers to people now recognizing what we’re missing,” said Abe Silverman, who served as general counsel to New Jersey’s utilities board from 2019 to 2023 under Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy.

“We don’t have enough generation to reliably serve our existing customers and data centers,” Silverman said.

The shortage is most severe at PJM Interconnect, the nation’s largest grid, where data center demand has pushed the system to a tipping point. The grid will be six gigawatts below reliability requirement by 2027, According to PJM.

Silverman said the power outage was nearly equivalent to Philadelphia’s electricity demand. That increases the likelihood of outages, he said. “Instead of a once-every-10-year power outage, we’re looking at something more frequent,” the analyst said.

“It’s in crisis mode right now. PJM has never been this short,” said Joe Bowring, president of Monitoring Analytics, which serves as an independent market monitor for PJM.

PJM Interconnection serves more than 65 million people in 13 states in the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest. It includes key swing states for midterm elections, such as Pennsylvania and Virginia.

The price of securing power capacity at PJM has exploded in recent years at $23 billion attributable to data centers, according to Watchdog Monitoring Analytics. These costs are ultimately passed on to consumers. This amounts to a “tremendous transfer of wealth”, he told watchdog PJM. November letter.

“I don’t think we’ve seen the end of the political fallout,” said Rob Gramlich, president of energy industry consulting firm Grid Strategies.

“And we’re going to see a lot of the ramifications of that because there will be a lot more elections in 2026 than in 2025,” Gramlich said. “Every politician will say they have the answer on affordability and that their opponents’ policies will raise rates.”

Silverman said the shortage will be made worse by Trump’s recent decision to halt all offshore wind farms under construction off the East Coast. This includes Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, a massive 2.6 gigawatt project that will help supply the large data center market in Northern Virginia.

“By shutting down a project that is projected to come online in the very near future, you are directly increasing the prices we all pay for electricity, and not even by an amount,” Silverman said. he said. “This is a huge, huge additional hole that we have to dig now.”

Data centers are currently facing backlash on multiple fronts. The PJM watchdog has called for the grid to reject data centers it doesn’t have the power to serve or require them to bring their own generation. Virginia’s utility regulator is demanding data centers pay the bulk of the new transmission and generation costs that will serve them starting in 2027.

Brian Fitzsimons, CEO of GridUnity, a company that uses software to help utilities route connection requests, said data center developers will likely begin moving to build more power plants on site, called colocation, as they struggle to quickly secure supply on the grid.

But Silverman said “co-location” has problems that will also face political scrutiny.

“Co-location effectively takes a generator out of the market,” he said. “It would be unethical to have a situation where data centers can purchase private power plants, exposing the rest of us to the possibility of greater blackouts.”