Senate permitting deal would make data centers of 20 megawatts or more pay the full cost of their power

The chairs and top Democrats of the Senate's two energy and environment committees, Shelley Moore Capito, Mike Lee, Sheldon Whitehouse and Martin Heinrich, on Wednesday introduced the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026, a deal to speed federal environmental reviews and permits for energy and infrastructure projects. CNBC reported that Capito wants it to be the first vote when the Senate returns after the Nov. 3 election.

Most of the 417-page text rewrites permitting rules under the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act, and adds a section meant to let projects keep their permits once issued, absent extraordinary circumstances, a violation of law or a court order. The part that reaches business electricity bills is Section 2107, "Ratepayer protection."

What the data center rule actually says

• Who is covered: data center or high-density computing load of 20 megawatts or more at one site, or across sites under common ownership, including sites expected to reach 20 megawatts at full buildout. AI training and inference, cloud hosting and cryptocurrency mining are all named.
• Who is not: computing equipment that is ancillary to a facility whose main business is something else. A factory's or an office's server room is not a data center under the bill.
• The floor: "No portion" of the incremental cost of serving a covered load, including new generation, storage, transmission and distribution, may be recovered from any other customer. If a data center leaves early, it keeps paying until that cost is recovered, and it must post financial assurance before a utility builds for it.
• States can go further: a state may charge covered loads more than their cost and credit the surplus to other customers.

This is stricter than the House bill the Senate blocked on Wednesday. That bill, H.R. 9340, failed 57-43 on a cloture vote, and CNBC described it as a framework states could consider adopting. We covered that vote in today's Senate story.

The timeline nobody is quoting

The federal transmission-pricing half of the section does not take effect on signing. The bill gives the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission 270 days after enactment to revise its 1994 transmission pricing policy, then 270 days after that to propose a rule, then one year after the proposal to finalize it. Run to every deadline, that is about 905 days, close to two and a half years, before utilities must file new transmission rates for data center customers. The bill also tells FERC to give a cheaper rate to data centers that accept non-firm service, meaning power that can be cut when the grid is strained.

For a restaurant, a cold-storage warehouse or a small manufacturer on a utility in a data center corridor, that is the practical point. Even if this were signed before the end of this year, the FERC transmission rule could run into 2029 on the full schedule. Until the bill passes, the questions on current bills will keep being settled by state commissions and grid operators, as happened today when the largest US grid shelved its 6.8-gigawatt data center power auction. The bill has to pass the Senate and the House before any of it applies.

Sources: Senate Environment and Public Works Committee release and bill text; CNBC; Senate roll call vote 254. The deadline total is our arithmetic from the bill text.