Oil and natural gas production have reached record-high numbers in the country, but that won’t stop energy from taking center stage at the midterms.
Members of both parties are bracing for an economic showdown over rising electricity costs, as Americans see soaring power bills as the new inflation indicator ahead of November.
Voters are pointing fingers at the proliferation of data centers in rural areas across the nation as a reason for the uptick in energy costs. And according to a recent Morgan Stanley Wealth Management report, the current power drain is merely a drop in the bucket—data centers and generative AI are forecasted to account for 75% of incremental load growth through 2030.
As of late 2025, the United States was home to 5,427 AI-related facilities and counting, or roughly 45% of the world’s data centers. They’re scattered throughout the country, taking up millions of square feet, often covering hundreds or even thousands of acres, dwarfing the typical comparison to football fields. Since modern AI runs on tens of thousands of heavy and power-hungry graphics processing units (GPUs), the energy pull from these centers can require hundreds of megawatts, or even a gigawatt, of power.
