Jun 14, 2026
Amid growing public backlash against data centers, Entergy CEO Drew Marsh told CNBC’s Mad Money that data centers “want to be good neighbors.” And he has a solution that he says could help customers save money on their electric bill.
Residential electricity prices jumped 7.1% in 2025, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). And in some states, they jumped a whopping 20%. On average, Americans spent $110 more on electricity in 2025 than the previous year, according to a Joint Economic Committee analysis.
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While a perfect storm of factors is driving up prices, data center usage plays a significant role.
That’s why Entergy, a utility company that serves Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi and Texas, is adopting what Marsh calls a “Fair Share Plus” framework for its large data center customers. This means, along with paying to power their facilities, data center customers would also contribute to expenses shared among Entergy’s residential customer base.
“The plus part is that they are also covering some of the fixed costs,” Marsh told CNBC. “That means overhead costs and storm costs that our existing customers would have already been paying.”
According to Entergy, this framework would generate about $7 billion in savings for the utility’s existing customers, spread out over the length of the data center contracts (about 15 to 20 years).
In a statement to Moneywise, Marsh said, “We proactively worked with our state leaders to recruit a new industry with attractive power agreements that protect and benefit our existing customers. Our respective public service commissions provided the collaboration, oversight and direction needed to make this emerging high-tech and electric future a win for everyone in our region. This public-private partnership is creating new, well-paying jobs, investments and community improvements for the people we jointly serve and will provide lower cost power in the coming years for our customers.”
Why electricity bills are rising
Almost two-thirds (64%) of Americans believe they’re seeing rising home energy costs because utility companies want to make more money, according to a Pew Research Center survey. But 66% also blame data centers as either a major or minor reason.
However, the data center boom isn’t the only reason costs are going up.
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“One of the big drivers of price increases over the last five years has been extreme weather events,” Charles Hua, founder and executive director of PowerLines, told Fortune. PowerLines is a nonprofit that focuses on utility regulation. “That’s nobody’s fault necessarily, but nonetheless it’s taking a toll on the grid and costing consumers.”
Another reason is the aging power grid. U.S. investor-owned electric companies have spent more than $1.3 trillion over the past decade to modernize the grid, according to a report from the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), a trade association representing investor-owned utilities.
They’re also projected to invest more than $1.1 trillion between 2025 and 2029 “to support the growing electricity demand driven by artificial intelligence and data center expansion, industrialization and the reshoring of manufacturing activity, and the electrification of the broader economy.”
And those costs are, in part, passed onto the consumer.
“When utilities replace old wooden poles with steel and concrete, or swap out thousands of miles of leak-prone gas pipes, they’re allowed to recover these costs from customers plus a regulated profit,” according to GovFacts.
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At the same time, investor-owned utilities have reported massive profits over the past few years.
Between 2021 and 2024, investor-owned utilities reported about $186 billion in profits, according to an analysis by the Energy & Policy Institute. The watchdog group also found that, over the same period, those utilities kept an average of 12.8% of their revenue as profit.
Preliminary data from 2025 shows that margins now average around 14.6%. “Electric utilities kept about 15 cents of every dollar they collected as profit last year. For a customer paying a $200 monthly electric bill, that means roughly $30 went to corporate profits,” according to a report from the Energy & Policy Institute.
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How data centers play into energy costs
A convergence of factors, including corporate profits, are driving up electricity bills. But power-hungry data centers are a major contributor, and they’ve been springing up around the country to meet surging demand for AI. To date, there are close to 4,800 data centers across the U.S., according to the US Data Center Market Map.
Not only are there more data centers, but they’re getting bigger. A lot bigger. And that’s fuelling demand for power.
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The number of new data center campuses expected to exceed 1 gigawatt (GW) will increase from about one in five in 2030 to one in three by 2035, according to a January 2026 report by energy company Bloom Energy. “To contextualize this scale, each 1 GW campus would consume as much as roughly 20% of New York City’s entire electricity load,” according to the report.
And, as data centers approach “gigawatt scale,” power availability isn’t the only challenge, as “developers expect cooling capacity, water access, permitting complexity, and network infrastructure to become significant bottlenecks.”
So it’s perhaps not surprising that residents are worried they’ll end up footing part of the bill.
A Bloomberg News analysis found that electricity prices are as much as 267% higher per month than they were five years ago in areas with a high concentration of data centers.
How major data center companies are responding
While Entergy’s Marsh is offering up a potential solution, tech executives from Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle and xAI have signed the Ratepayer Protection Pledge, in which they pledge to cover the cost of all power delivery infrastructure upgrades, thereby limiting the impact on residential electric bills.
Consumer Reports is urging the industry to back up its pledges, according to Chris Harto, manager for sustainability advocacy with Consumer Reports, in a recent article. “Companies need to show — clearly and verifiably — that they’re paying their own way, not driving up everyone else’s electricity bills or harming the environment.”
But even if consumers implement cost-saving tactics like lowering the thermostat when leaving home or utilizing solar power, it may not be enough to offset rising electric costs, especially if you live near a major data center. Adjusting your monthly budget (or even looking for a new provider if you live in a state with a deregulated energy market) may be a more prudent route.
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Vawn Himmelsbach is a veteran journalist who covers tech, business, finance and travel. Her work has been featured in publications such as The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, National Post, CBC News, Yahoo Finance, MSN, CAA Magazine, Travelweek, Explore Magazine and Consumer Reports.
