Inside the Energy Affordability Crisis: ‘We Will All Be Affected By This’

Massive hyperscale data centers’ contribution to rising bills is highly visible. Seventy-eight percent of Americans were at least somewhat concerned the facilities would cause energy prices to climb, according to a nationally representative survey (PDF) of 2,146 U.S. adults conducted by Consumer Reports in November 2025. At the time, increases in home energy costs were already straining the household finances of around two-thirds of Americans.

Such worries have fed into a growing backlash. A March 2026 Gallup survey found that 7 in 10 Americans are against data center construction in their communities and, according to watchdog group Data Center Watch, community pushback blocked or delayed at least 75 projects worth approximately $130 billion in just the first three months of 2026. Opposition to the data center buildout recently led to a statewide moratorium on new hyperscale facilities in New York, the first in the nation.

Residential electricity prices have been increasing steadily, and have outpaced inflation since 2022. A recent federal analysis suggests rates jumped 7.3 percent between April 2025 and April 2026 alone. This summer’s cooling needs may be driving electric bills even higher: The average residential cost is projected to increase 10.5 percent, according to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association (NEADA) and the Center for Energy Poverty and Climate. Experts predict this trend will continue. 

For many, the increases are unmanageable. Coming into 2026, roughly 1 in 6 U.S. households were behind on their utility bills and, by the end of the year, Americans could owe a combined $25 billion, NEADA reported in June. The burden disproportionately affects Black and Asian households, according to an analysis by The Century Foundation, and utility debt is particularly high in parts of the South and Appalachia. 

The inability to pay has left a staggering number of people facing service disconnection. According to federal data released in April, 94.9 million electric utility customers received final disconnection notices in 2024, the most recent year for which data is available, with companies ultimately cutting power to 13.4 million households. 

From behind the microphone at an early June rally in Durham, N.C., Darrion Smith expressed his views on a Duke Energy proposal to hike rates by 18 percent: “They have plenty of money, they just want ours.”

Smith works in the children’s unit at a state psychiatric hospital and was speaking as a member of UE Local 150, the North Carolina Public Service Workers Union. “For a billionaire utility executive, an extra $30 a month is pocket change,” he says. But for a Department of Health and Human Services worker like himself, “that is the difference between buying groceries or living in the dark.” 

That’s also the difference for his 30-year-old daughter, Ariel Brown, a single mother who lives with her 11-year-old daughter near Fayetteville, about an hour south of Raleigh. Brown, who receives disability payments, calls her fluctuating Duke Energy bills “ridiculous."

“They keep saying you’re using that much energy, there’s nothing we can do about it, the charges are valid,” she says. And her attempts to secure assistance, both through the utility itself and through the state, have been unsuccessful. “They don’t care,” she says of Duke. “They’ll cut [the electricity] off.” So she pays—with her family’s help, she admits. 

A few weeks after the Durham rally, Duke Energy Carolinas announced it was lowering its increase proposal from 18 to 11.6 percent. And earlier this week the utility company said it was dropping its rate hike request further, to just 3.7 percent. But that’s the average for all its customers, including commercial and industrial facilities. Residential ratepayers would see a 9.5 percent increase over two years. 

The changes haven’t shifted Smith’s view: “They don’t need any type of rate hike,” he says. “It is greed.” He also blames the utility for burdening its customers with data center costs, and says those companies “need to be responsible” and “pay for their own energy bills—not the consumers.” 

Smith remembers Duke Energy’s previous rate hike proposals but says this one feels different. “They got a lot of heat on them this time. I really think Duke Energy is not going to get what they want” because there are new voices speaking out against this increase. “So I think those commissioners are going to listen to some of those people,” he says. And if they don’t? “This might be one of the biggest stories in American history dealing with energy … because it’s going to break people’s backs.”

When Samantha Alba learned about AES Indiana’s proposed rate hike in 2023, she says it struck her as excessive, especially given the increases she’d already been experiencing. The hearings she attended were packed, with many seniors and others on a fixed income. So when the state’s utility regulation commission approved the increase, she says it “sparked a lot of anger” in her.

Alba didn’t know that another fight—against a proposed Google data center in Franklin Township, southeast of downtown Indianapolis—would soon fuel even more outrage. At the time, Alba, a real estate agent, had clients getting ready to close on a home near the site. She remembers thinking, “This isn’t in my backyard, but it still concerns me because I don’t want my clients to be caught off-guard.” Alba joined her community in speaking out against the facility and, in September 2025, Google withdrew its project proposal. 

But other tech companies now want to come in with their own data centers, and Alba worries about what the future will hold. “If it’s not enough to say that children’s lungs are in danger, ecosystems are being destroyed, people’s quiet enjoyment of their property and their surroundings and their community is being destroyed … maybe [we should be] saying, ‘Hey, you’re going to be messing with property values, you’re gonna be messing with desirable communities.’”

She believes that real estate agents need to be more active in voicing their concerns about the community impacts of potential data centers—and also about electricity rate increases, which she describes as intertwined. “When we see a rate increase from AES that is absolutely unnecessary and is only geared toward profit, I really believe we should be stepping up and saying more and doing more to protect homeowners, and renters as well. We need to be protecting the overall communities that we’re serving.”

The Rev. Keyanna Jones Moore has been focused on high energy costs since 2022, before she realized the impact that hyperscale data centers would have on bills in her home state of Georgia. During more than two decades as a community organizer, she has advocated on a range of issues, including economic and environmental justice.

In recent years, she’s been educating people across the state about the disproportionate energy burden certain communities face, including those in the neighborhood where she grew up, now home to “cop city,” a police training facility that she, and many others, strongly opposed.

She started speaking out, in concert with other local organizers, against Georgia Power’s repeated rate increases and began to see a clear intersection of energy burden and the “onslaught of data centers” coming to her state. Now, when Moore speaks with communities about the impacts of data centers, she says they are devastated.

“Energy has been a main concern—not only because of the strength of people’s power grids but also because of the enormous cost of electricity for people,” she says, noting that people who are already struggling with high energy costs are concerned that as the data center buildout continues, the burden’s only going to get worse. 

Many communities are now on high alert, she says. The utility’s multiple increases have been “unsustainable” for a lot of people, Moore says, including for the members of Atlanta’s Park Avenue Baptist, the church she co-pastors. Many in that congregation are struggling to afford their bills.

“As faith leaders, I think it’s incumbent upon us to remind people that we stand at the crossroads. Everything comes together [...] when you talk about how it is that you stand up for people and do the right thing, being an upstander, rather than a bystander, and allowing your faith to drive positive activism.”

In the end, she says, “We all need electricity. And it doesn’t matter if you make the most money or the least money—we will all be affected by this.”

This work is made possible, in part, by a grant from the U.S. Energy Foundation. CR’s work on energy affordability is also made possible by the vision and support of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.