‘Using more power and paying less for it’: Nebraska bill seeks to regulate data centers in the state

Rising electricity costs in Nebraska have some lawmakers pointing the finger at data centers, and a bill to regulate those facilities went before the Natural Resources Committee on Thursday.Some energy leaders see data centers as a boon for business.”Embrace this technology and the data centers and the potential that they bring for economic development,” said Jim Smith, a long-time energy leader and current candidate for the Omaha Public Power District Board.Others see a drain on the system.”There are a lot of concerns about data centers coming into Nebraska and the amount of our natural resources that they are consuming,” Sen. Ashlei Spivey said.Spivey co-sponsored Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh’s LB1111, which stems from those concerns.”LB1111 is intended to protect the economic interest in Nebraskans from potential adverse impacts of large data centers,” Cavanaugh said in a committee hearing on Thursday.The bill seeks annual reports on data center power use by suppliers. It would require data centers with demand of 20 megawatts and more to pay for the new electricity infrastructure it needs. It would also prohibit suppliers from transferring costs to other consumers.”Data centers are using more power and paying less for it,” Cavanaugh said. “At the same time, residential electricity rates have substantially increased.”OPPD did not take a position on the bill but shared a statement on Thursday.”We are seeing growth across all customer categories,” a spokesperson for OPPD said. “If anything, data centers’ energy usage and the retail sales revenue they generate help OPPD to lessen the need for higher rate increases.”Figures show gigawatt-hour sales leaping each year in the industrial customer class, which data centers belong to: 1,699 GWh in 2023, 2,741 GWh in 2024 and 3,923 GWh in 2025.Spivey and Cavanaugh say the bill would make statewide guardrails to safeguard consumers.”Right now, there’s not a parameter, there’s not a framework,” Spivey said. “This would really give it teeth.”READ MORE: Get the Facts: More data centers are popping up across the US. What are they?But Smith said data centers already pay their fair share. Smith said the issue of affordability stems more from the power suppliers themselves and says they need to focus more on reliable power sources, citing an issue of dispatchability with many renewables.”This bill really isolates a single customer class,” Smith said. “And it kind of creates undue scrutiny on the data centers.”Make sure you can always see the latest news, weather, sports and more from KETV NewsWatch 7 on Google Search.NAVIGATE: Home | Weather | Local News | National | Sports | Newscasts on demand |