A bill (HF 2447) has passed out of an Iowa House subcommittee that would require data centers to report to the state how much water and electricity they use and where it comes from. It would also require utilities to create separate rates and fees for data centers.
Pam Mackey-Taylor, with the Iowa Chapter of the Sierra Club, said data centers should not cause other customers to pay more for electricity, especially proposed data centers that aren’t built.
“We may be on the hook for large costs on the infrastructure that’ll never be used and that affects affordability for everyday Iowans,” Mackey-Taylor said.
The bill would halt data center construction until the utility for a project has filed its data center rates with the state. Some utilities warned that that could have a chilling effect on multimillion-dollar developments.