Policy LabPolicy analysis with the thesis up front and every source locked · built on PLACES I NEVER HEARD OF
Universal Social Security · part 5

A data-center electricity fee that pays household electric bills

2026-11-04 · universal social security, electricity, data centers, national
ThesisThe machines that do the work run on electricity, and their load is the fastest-growing claim on the grid. Charge data centers 12 cents per kilowatt-hour into a power fund, and use it to pay household electric bills, lowest incomes first, until every home's bill is paid. It scales with the machines' work, it is metered, and it cannot move offshore without moving the latency with it.

At 12 cents the fee roughly doubles a data center's power cost. That is the point: the data center is the factory of this economy, and its power bill is the most direct place to attach the public's claim.

Homes with bills paid, 2030
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Homes with bills paid, 2040
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Every home's bill paid
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first year of full coverage
How it works

Data centers pay the fee on every kilowatt-hour into a power fund, through their bank like every other flow. The fund pays household electric bills directly, starting with the lowest-income households and working up. The model's load path is 300 TWh in 2027, about 650 TWh in 2030, then 8 percent a year; household bills total about $270 billion a year2, growing 1 percent. It is enacted first through state utility commissions, region by region, where the load is landing now.

What could go wrong

A fee this high shapes where data centers are built, toward cheap, clean power and away from grids where households already pay for upgrades. That is intended. The honest counterargument is that it could slow the build-out the whole design depends on; the model has no elasticity for that, so the fee slider is here. If machines get efficient faster than they multiply (and at 12 cents they have every reason to), the fund shrinks and coverage stalls: "every home's bill paid" is a projection of a load path, not a promise.

Sources (3)
  1. 2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report — Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, December 2024 · original · data-center load and its projected growth. Not yet locked.
  2. Electric Sales, Revenue, and Average Price — U.S. Energy Information Administration · original · household electricity spending of about $270 billion a year. Not yet locked.
  3. A data-center power surcharge, returned to households — Policy Lab, PLACES I NEVER HEARD OF · original · the smaller version of this instrument, as a rebate.

Numbered references in the text point to this list. "Locked" means we hold a dated copy of the file on the PLACES platform so the figure can be checked later even if the publisher changes the page.