PROPOSED LEGISLATION, not enacted law
Three legislative proposals. Three different answers to the same underlying problem. According to a
Thompson Coburn LLP regulatory analysis published June 16, 2026, bipartisan bills in
Congress would each reshape the energy cost equation for AI infrastructure operators, and they
don’t agree on how.
First bill: the *Guaranteeing Rate Insulation from Data (GRID) Centers Act*, co-sponsored by
Senators Hawley and Blumenthal. The pairing is notable. Hawley and Blumenthal aren’t natural
legislative partners; their agreement signals that AI infrastructure cost-shifting has become a
genuinely cross-ideological concern. The bill would prohibit data center operators from passing
energy-related infrastructure costs to retail electricity consumers. The cost stays with the
operator.
Second bill: the *No Harm Data Center Act*, introduced by Representative Landsman. This proposal
goes further. It would require AI companies to finance 100% of their own energy infrastructure
costs, and it would ban non-disclosure agreements between municipalities and data center
operators. That NDA prohibition is a transparency provision with real local governance implications:
municipalities that have quietly negotiated favorable terms for data center siting would no longer
be able to keep those arrangements confidential, if the bill were enacted.
Third proposal: legislation that would permit qualifying data centers to build independent off-grid
power systems, subject to reduced federal regulatory requirements, provided those systems maintain
complete physical separation from the public electricity grid. Thompson Coburn characterizes this
as regulatory relief for off-grid builds, the specific scope of “reduced regulations” requires
review of the bill text, which hasn’t been confirmed through primary source.
All three are proposed. None is enacted law. Bill introduction dates aren’t specified in the
available reporting, so these may have been introduced before the June 16–18 reporting window –
“under active consideration in the current congressional session” is the accurate framing.
The pattern is worth naming. These aren’t fringe proposals. Bipartisan sponsorship on the GRID
Centers Act, cross-ideological concern about retail ratepayer exposure, and a transparency push on
municipal NDAs all point toward a congressional appetite for AI infrastructure cost accountability
that’s broader than any single party’s position.
Analysis
The NDA ban in the No Harm Data Center Act is the provision that gets the least attention and may have the most immediate local governance impact. Municipalities that have signed confidentiality agreements around data center siting terms should be evaluating those agreements now, not because the bill is law, but because public pressure around AI infrastructure costs is building regardless of what Congress does.
The catch is timing. Proposed legislation has a long path to enactment. Committee markup, floor
scheduling, House-Senate reconciliation, none of that has happened yet. For data center operators,
the compliance action isn’t to restructure financing now. It’s to understand which cost structures
would be prohibited or required under each scenario, so that contracts and infrastructure agreements
signed today aren’t locked into arrangements that become legally untenable if any of these bills
advance.
The
hyperscaler infrastructure brief covers the capital dynamics driving data center expansion. The real question is whether any of these bills reach committee markup before the congressional
recess. That’s the trigger that converts legislative watching into compliance planning.