A Bill That Started as a Pledge
On September 16, 2026, the US House of Representatives passed the Ratepayer Protection Act by a vote of 417 to 3, a rare near-unanimous result on a bill that touches the fastest-growing item on America's power grid. Sponsored by Rep. Gabe Evans, a Colorado Republican, and Rep. Kathy Castor, a Florida Democrat, the bill builds on a voluntary commitment some tech companies had already made in a Ratepayer Protection Pledge, and on Castor's earlier SHIELD Act filed with Rep. Mike Levin in January 2026. What changes with H.R. 9340 is that the pledge stops being voluntary.
The bill was introduced on June 19, 2026, and cleared the floor under a fast-track procedure that required a two-thirds majority, support it earned easily. Only three lawmakers voted against it: Reps. Summer Lee, Delia Ramirez and Rashida Tlaib, all Democrats who argued the bill still leaves too much of the decision to state regulators. The measure now heads to the Senate.
The 100 Megawatt Line
The Ratepayer Protection Act draws its line at large-load customers with a demand of 100 megawatts or more, roughly the draw of a mid-size AI training campus. Above that threshold, a data center must recover the full incremental cost of the generation, transmission and distribution capacity built to serve it, through a special rate charge or a direct agreement with its utility, rather than having that cost blended into the rates every household and small business pays.
Evans framed the goal in plain terms: families should not be forced to cover the costs of a data center's power buildout. Castor's version was sharper still: ratepayers should not have to subsidize wealthy corporations' growing energy demands, especially from AI data centers. Neither sponsor argued against data centers being built. Both argued the bill fixes who pays for the wires and turbines that get built for them.
The Part State Rules Usually Skip
The bill's financial assurance requirement is the piece that goes beyond what most state-level actions have done so far. A data center developer must now post assurances covering the infrastructure a utility builds on its behalf, so that if the project is canceled, scaled back or relocated after construction starts, the community is not left paying off a power plant or substation nobody uses. It is the same stranded-asset problem utilities have faced before with large industrial customers, applied for the first time at federal scale to AI infrastructure.
Several states had already moved in the same direction, though none went quite this far.
| Jurisdiction | Threshold | Cancellation protection |
|---|---|---|
| Federal, H.R. 9340 | 100 MW or more | Financial assurance required |
| Pennsylvania | Dedicated data center rate class | Not specified |
| Tennessee Valley Authority | Dedicated data center rate class | Not specified |
What Changes for Anyone Buying US Compute
For a company outside the United States that buys or leases American AI capacity, the practical change is that shopping between state rules is about to stop working as a strategy. A developer could once look for a state with looser cost allocation practices; a federal floor removes that option for any customer over the 100 megawatt line, which covers most training-scale AI campuses. Budget models built around a hoped-for permissive state should assume the national baseline instead: the data center's own contract, not the local ratepayer base, now carries the cost of the grid it needs.
The financial assurance clause matters just as much for procurement teams. Any colocation or dedicated power agreement signed from here should expect a bonding or guarantee requirement tied to project completion, the same kind of clause lenders already attach to large industrial construction. The Senate has not yet acted, so the bill is not law, but a 417-3 House vote is a stronger signal of where Washington is heading than any state ruling has offered this year.
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