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Ratepayer Protection Act (H.R. 9340)

high confidence · updated 2026-09-18

US bill amending the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 to add a Federal ratemaking standard for large-load electricity customers — non-residential consumers taking power primarily for information-technology infrastructure at 100 MW or more peak demand at a single site or campus. States must consider the standard and may decline it. Passed the House 417-3 on September 16, 2026; the Senate has not acted on it, and a companion, S. 5028, is pending in Senate Energy and Natural Resources.

Contents

The Ratepayer Protection Act is a bill in the 119th United States Congress that would amend the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 (PURPA) to add a Federal ratemaking standard requiring that electricity rates charged to very large industrial customers recover the full incremental cost of the grid upgrades built to serve them. The bill defines the covered class by function and size rather than by industry: a non-residential consumer taking electricity primarily to operate information-technology infrastructure, with 100 megawatts or more of aggregate peak demand at a single site or campus (Ratepayer Protection Act, H.R. 9340 — text as reported in the House (September 10, 2026)). The standard operates through PURPA's consider-and-determine mechanism, under which State regulators must hold a proceeding on it but may decline to adopt it. It passed the House of Representatives 417–3 on September 16, 2026 under a motion to suspend the rules. The Senate has not acted on H.R. 9340; a companion bill, S. 5028, was introduced by Sen. Jon Husted in July 2026 (Source: congress.gov; congress.gov).

Status and timeline

Rep. Gabe Evans (R-CO-8) introduced the bill on June 18, 2026, with Rep. Kathy Castor (D-FL) as the original cosponsor, and it was referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce (Source: congress.gov). The committee's release that day was issued by Chair Brett Guthrie (R-KY) and Energy Subcommittee Chair Bob Latta (R-OH) (Source: energycommerce.house.gov). As introduced, the bill defined a large-load customer by size alone, reaching any non-residential consumer contracting for facilities with 100 megawatts or more of aggregate peak demand (Source: congress.gov).

Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH) introduced a Senate companion, S. 5028, on July 16, 2026, and it was referred to the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. Its text already limited the class to facilities using electricity primarily for information-technology infrastructure (Source: congress.gov). E&E News reported that Husted's office said the senator would "continue working with ENR to get the Ratepayer Protection Act across the finish line in the Senate," and that the committee's chair, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), had said in June of data-center legislation, "I don't currently have that identified as a priority" (Source: eenews.net).

The House committee held meetings touching the bill on June 24, July 1 and July 20, 2026 (Source: congress.gov). Ahead of a markup that began on Monday, July 20 and continued into July 21, committee leaders released an amendment in the nature of a substitute that added the information-technology limb to the definition, which E&E News described as narrowing the bill "to apply specifically to data centers." The same report said Google and Microsoft had backed the bill (Source: eenews.net). The committee approved the bill 52–0 on July 21, 2026 as part of a broader data-center energy package that included five further grid measures (Source: energycommerce.house.gov; cbo.gov; broadbandbreakfast.com; thehill.com).

Energy and Commerce reported the bill with the substitute on September 10, 2026 as H. Rept. 119-814, placing it on the Union Calendar at No. 713. Forty-one additional sponsors were added the same day (Ratepayer Protection Act, H.R. 9340 — text as reported in the House (September 10, 2026)). The text of H. Rept. 119-814 had not been published on congress.gov as of September 17, 2026. The Congressional Budget Office published its cost estimate on September 9, 2026 (see below).

The House passed the reported text on September 16, 2026 by 417–3 on Roll Call 312, under a motion to suspend the rules requiring a two-thirds majority; a motion to reconsider was laid on the table and agreed to without objection (Source: congress.gov). The Clerk's record shows Republicans voting 210–0 and Democrats 206–3, the one Independent voting yea, no members voting present and 12 not voting. The three nay votes were cast by Reps. Summer Lee (D-PA), Delia Ramirez (D-IL) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) (Source: clerk.house.gov; cnbc.com). The bill's policy area is recorded as Energy. As of September 17, 2026 congress.gov listed only the introduced and reported text versions, with no engrossed print (Source: congress.gov).

Scope and definitions

Section 2(a) adds a new paragraph (22) to PURPA section 111(d) (16 U.S.C. 2621(d)). Subparagraph (C) defines a large-load customer as a non-residential electric consumer that, on or after enactment, requests to enter into or enters into a contract or other agreement for the sale of electric energy for one or more facilities that (i) "require electric energy primarily to operate information technology infrastructure and related systems pertaining to data storage and computational applications and services" and (ii) "have, in the aggregate, a peak electric demand of 100 megawatts or more at a single site or campus" (Ratepayer Protection Act, H.R. 9340 — text as reported in the House (September 10, 2026)).

The definition is functional and size-based. The operative text of the bill uses neither the phrase "artificial intelligence" nor the phrase "data center." The Congressional Research Service summary introduces "data centers" only as a parenthetical example of the covered class (Source: congress.gov), and the CBO estimate paraphrases the class as consumers that operate "a data center with a peak demand for electricity of at least 100 megawatts at a single facility" (Source: cbo.gov). News coverage of the House vote described the bill as applying to "artificial intelligence data centers" (Source: cnbc.com). On its terms the standard would reach a 100-megawatt facility whose load is primarily information technology but not AI-related, and would not reach an AI facility below that threshold. Coverage attaches to contracts entered into or requested on or after enactment, so existing agreements are outside the definition (Ratepayer Protection Act, H.R. 9340 — text as reported in the House (September 10, 2026)).

Key provisions

Subparagraph (A) provides that a rate charged or entered into by an electric utility for service to a large-load customer "shall be designed to recover from the large-load customer the full, incremental cost of any generation, transmission, or distribution upgrade necessary to serve the load" of that customer. The duty runs to rate design rather than to collection. It extends expressly to the case in which the customer terminates its contract with the utility or otherwise ceases buying energy, which places stranded-cost exposure from an abandoned or cancelled facility on the customer rather than on the utility's other ratepayers (Ratepayer Protection Act, H.R. 9340 — text as reported in the House (September 10, 2026)).

Subparagraph (B) requires that, before making any generation, transmission or distribution upgrade necessary to serve a large-load customer, the utility "shall require the large-load customer provide to the electric utility financial assurances or contributions to cover the cost of such upgrade." The bill does not specify the form the assurances must take (Ratepayer Protection Act, H.R. 9340 — text as reported in the House (September 10, 2026)). Evans's office has described the cost recovery as occurring "over time through special rate structures or other agreements" (Source: gabeevans.house.gov).

Obligations by actor

The bill operates through PURPA's consider-and-determine mechanism rather than by direct federal mandate. Section 2(b)(1) adds PURPA section 112(b)(9), under which each State regulatory authority, with respect to each utility for which the State has ratemaking authority, and each nonregulated electric utility must commence consideration of the new standard, or set a hearing date for it, within one year of enactment, and must complete the consideration and make the determination within two years (Ratepayer Protection Act, H.R. 9340 — text as reported in the House (September 10, 2026)).

A State may consider the standard and decline to adopt it; the federal obligation is procedural. The CBO estimate describes the requirement the same way, as one for "state regulatory commissions to consider whether to adopt the federal standards," noting that "commissions may adopt or reject federal standards for ratemaking under current law" (Source: cbo.gov). A new PURPA section 112(i), added by section 2(b)(1)(C), disapplies the consideration requirement altogether for a utility in a State that, before enactment, has already implemented the standard or a comparable standard for that utility, has already conducted a proceeding to consider implementing one, or whose legislature has already voted on implementing one. Section 2(b)(2) makes a parallel date adjustment to PURPA section 124 (16 U.S.C. 2634) for prior and pending proceedings (Ratepayer Protection Act, H.R. 9340 — text as reported in the House (September 10, 2026)).

The breadth of the section 112(i) exemption depends on how much comparable state action already exists, which the text does not quantify. Guthrie's release on passage says the approach draws "on what 24 states are already doing" (Source: guthrie.house.gov), and Latta said after the markup that "numerous states already have large load tariffs in place for data centers, including Ohio" (Source: energycommerce.house.gov).

Enforcement, penalties and budget effects

The bill creates no new penalty schedule and confers no new federal enforcement authority. Compliance runs through PURPA's existing structure for the consideration and determination of federal standards by State regulatory authorities and nonregulated utilities, and, where a State adopts the standard, through that State's own ratemaking and enforcement machinery (Ratepayer Protection Act, H.R. 9340 — text as reported in the House (September 10, 2026)).

The CBO cost estimate of September 9, 2026, for the bill as ordered reported on July 21, 2026, projects no effect on direct spending, revenues or discretionary spending over 2026–2036 because the bill "would not affect federal responsibilities." It classifies the consideration requirement as an intergovernmental mandate under the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act with costs "small and well below the threshold" of $107 million in 2026, and finds no private-sector mandate (Source: cbo.gov).

Relationship to the Ratepayer Protection Pledge

The bill text does not refer to the White House Ratepayer Protection Pledge (Ratepayer Protection Act, H.R. 9340 — text as reported in the House (September 10, 2026)). Its proponents describe it as building on that pledge. The Energy and Commerce Committee's introduction release states that the bill "codifies the principles underpinning the Ratepayer Protection Pledge, a commitment by Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, and xAI to cover their own data center energy costs" (Source: energycommerce.house.gov), and Evans's September 10 release says it "builds on the principles of President Trump's Ratepayer Protection Pledge" (Source: gabeevans.house.gov). Coverage of the House vote described the bill as codifying parts of the pledge, which it said President Trump released in March (Source: cnbc.com). Reporting published July 24, 2026 described the Energy and Commerce Committee as having cleared a set of data-center and energy-infrastructure bills on bipartisan votes ahead of the summer recess, and said Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios had expressed interest in working with Rep. Josh Riley (D-NY) to codify a ratepayer-protection commitment in statute (Source: insideaipolicy.com; insideaipolicy.com). President Trump separately expanded the voluntary pledge to 23 governors and 187 companies (Source: apnews.com).

Reactions and context

Supporters presented the bill as keeping the costs of AI infrastructure off household bills. Evans wrote before the vote that "those creating the new demand should be responsible for the costs associated with meeting that demand" (Source: cnbc.com), and described the consider-and-determine structure as "giving states the flexibility to determine what works best for their communities" (Source: guthrie.house.gov). Castor said on introducing it that "ratepayers should not have to subsidize wealthy corporations' growing energy demands, especially from AI data centers." Speaker Mike Johnson said after the vote that the bill "guarantees hardworking American families won't foot the bill for the buildout of AI infrastructure." House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called it "a step forward," adding that "more clearly needs to be done" (Source: cnbc.com). At the July markup, ranking member Frank Pallone (D-NJ), who had endorsed a national data-center moratorium, said the bills "don't go far enough to ensure that big tech and other data center owners fully pay for the energy use and demand that they create," a position echoed by Reps. Doris Matsui (D-CA) and Paul Tonko (D-NY) (Source: eenews.net).

Environmental groups criticized the absence of a binding requirement. Sara Chieffo of the League of Conservation Voters said that "with only a weak directive to states to voluntarily consider adopting cost protections against the energy costs of data centers for ratepayers, state regulators could ultimately choose to ignore this bill." Mitch Jones of Food & Water Watch said the bill would speed construction of new data centers and called for "a complete pause on new AI data centers now" (Source: cnbc.com).

Polling released the day of the vote measured public support for the principle the standard addresses. In an AP-NORC Center and Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago survey of 3,424 adults conducted July 6–24, 2026, 73% supported "requiring companies that build data centers to pay for the electric grid upgrades needed to support them," 56% strongly, against 7% opposed, and 84% were at least somewhat concerned about data centers' effect on electricity prices. Support for the grid-upgrade requirement was 79% among Democrats and 76% among Republicans (AP-NORC/EPIC 2026 Energy Survey: AI, Data Centers, Climate and Energy).

The House vote fell in the same week that Speaker Mike Johnson signalled the chamber would take no action on frontier-AI legislation before a six-week recess, with the Ratepayer Protection Act scheduled for a floor vote instead (Source: npr.org); CNBC described the recess beginning that week as seven weeks long, running to the November 3 election (Source: cnbc.com). State-level measures addressing the same cost-allocation question were moving in parallel, including New York's moratorium on large new data centers and Governor Kathy Hochul's September 15, 2026 recommendation that local governments seek community investments of at least $1 million per megawatt of utility demand from data-center developers (Source: reuters.com).

Open questions

  • Whether the Senate takes up H.R. 9340 or its companion, S. 5028, which has been in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee since July 16, 2026 without further action.
  • Whether an engrossed print differs from the reported text passed on September 16, 2026. Congress.gov listed only the introduced and reported versions as of September 17, 2026.
  • What H. Rept. 119-814 says about the committee's intent, including on the pledge and on the section 112(i) exemption; its text was not published as of September 17, 2026.
  • How many States fall within the new PURPA section 112(i) exemption on the date of enactment, which determines how much of the country the consideration requirement would actually reach.
  • What forms of financial assurance would satisfy subparagraph (B), which the text leaves unspecified.

Relationships

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