By Sarah Moskowitz
Executive Director
Citizens Utility Board (CUB)
(Note: A version of this opinion piece appeared in Crain’s Chicago Business on July 27, 2026.)
Sarah Moskowitz, CUB Executive Director
This summer millions of Illinois consumers are paying power prices that are about 40-50 percent higher than what they were just two years ago, and it will only get worse if Illinois doesn’t pass meaningful reforms to rein in data center costs–specifically the POWER Act.
My CUB colleagues and I have traveled the state, speaking to rooms packed with people livid about data centers. People are outraged to be paying higher electricity bills because Big Tech—some of the world’s wealthiest corporations—isn’t paying its fair share of energy costs.
Illinois is a data center leader–the Pew Research Center ranked us fourth (behind Virginia, Texas, and California) with 262 operating or planned data centers. But this is a grid-wide problem: Stopping a data center from being built won’t protect a community from skyrocketing power bills.
There are multiple ways data centers increase our costs.
● Higher delivery and transmission charges to cover data center-related grid upgrades. Since 2021, ComEd has spent more than $3 billion to connect large facilities, most or all of which were data centers, to the system. The deposits ComEd collected from those customers only covered about 25 percent – the rest burdens everyone else’s bills. The utility recently increased certain deposits and charges for large loads, but even had that updated policy been in place these last five years, the rest of ComEd’s customers would still have been left covering a substantial chunk of Big Tech’s interconnection costs.
● Higher supply charges. Soaring demand projected for new and proposed data centers has increased the cost of reserve electricity (“capacity”) at auctions run by PJM Interconnection, which serves ComEd’s customers. PJM’s Independent Market Monitor found that the capacity price spike that ballooned ComEd customers’ bills starting in June 2025 was caused entirely by the surge in data center energy demand.
What’s worse, all of these expenses are locked in ahead of time based on forecasted future energy demand. Data center development is notoriously speculative, however, and these forecasts include projects that will never actually get built. Unless data center developers make the necessary financial commitments upfront, the rest of us are left holding the bag.
Recent price spikes are just the beginning. The Natural Resources Defense Council has estimated that consumers across the PJM grid could see bill increases of up to $70 per month in years to come if we don’t take decisive action.
Yet you’d never know there was a problem if you listened to Big Tech. This past March, Meta, Amazon, and other giants went to the White House to endorse President Trump’s voluntary Ratepayer Protection Pledge. The Data Center Coalition (DCC) at the time trumpeted its commitment to “being good neighbors” and “paying our full energy costs.”
If Big Tech were serious about paying their full energy costs, they would stop putting up roadblocks to meaningful reforms–like the Illinois POWER Act. The Act would, among other things, require data centers to pay their own interconnection costs, bring their own new capacity (or reduce their usage during peak hours), and bring their own new clean energy (or pay the real cost for the State to do it).
The General Assembly didn’t pass the POWER Act in the spring legislative session. But since then, Gov. J.B. Pritzker has paused tax incentives for new data centers and outlined a framework to protect Illinois consumers from data center-related energy costs. The message is clear: It’s time for policymakers to make Big Tech pay for the costs they cause.
Illinois has proven itself a leader on forward-thinking, consumer-friendly energy policy. It’s time for Illinois to lead again. Our electric bills depend on it.
Please urge your state legislators to pass the POWER Act.
Sarah Moskowitz became CUB’s fourth executive director in 2023. She leads the organization’s efforts to identify equitable and consumer-friendly climate solutions while advocating for consumer protections and lower utility bills in Springfield, at the Illinois Commerce Commission and in the courts. Sarah has served in a variety of roles during her years at CUB, from counseling individual consumers with utility complaints to building CUB’s outreach program into a national leader that staffs hundreds of free events a year showing people how to reduce their costs. Sarah earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Chicago. When she’s not working as a consumer advocate, Sarah enjoys keeping tabs on the urban wildlife in her neighborhood, rock climbing, and reading history.
