Data Center and Grid Energy Legislation, by State
At least 257 state and federal bills introduced in 2025 and 2026 directly address data centers' power draw, water use, or grid interconnection, spanning 43 states plus Congress, according to USLege's live bill-tracking database.
By Laura Davis, Co-Founder & Chief Business Officer at USLege. Former tech policy director and lobbyist, from D.C. to the states.
Methodology: pulled directly from USLege's live bill-tracking database on August 12, 2026, searching 2025 and 2026 session bills for language on data centers, data center energy or water use, grid capacity and interconnection, electricity demand, and co-location of generation, then verified by full bill text and action history. The 257 figure counts bills whose text explicitly names data centers. It does not include bills that regulate the same underlying activity, large industrial power loads connecting to the grid, without using that phrase, so state totals below (especially Texas) understate real activity. USLege's live platform is the way to see the current, complete picture for any specific state.
New Jersey, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Michigan carry the most bill volume. New Jersey, Virginia, and Pennsylvania all sit inside PJM, the mid-Atlantic grid where data center growth has already forced utilities into rate cases over who pays for new capacity. But the eight states that enacted a data center or large-load energy law into effect since the start of 2025, Texas, Minnesota, West Virginia, Alabama, Utah, South Dakota, Florida, and Washington, are spread across every region and both parties. This is not a coastal story or a single-party story. It is a grid-capacity story showing up everywhere the load is landing.
Three bills that actually became law
Texas SB 6 (89th Legislature, Regular Session)
Authored by Sen. Phil King and Sen. Charles Schwertner, with coauthors Carol Alvarado, César Blanco, Donna Campbell, Brandon Creighton, Sarah Eckhardt, Brent Hagenbuch, Bryan Hughes, and Mayes Middleton. Requires the Public Utility Commission to adopt ERCOT rules making large-load customers, the category that in practice is dominated by data centers, pay their own interconnection costs, disclose competing service requests and backup generation, and meet site-control and financial-commitment standards before connecting to the grid. Creates a formal process for co-locating large loads with existing power generation, subject to ERCOT studies and a 60-day commission review deadline. Signed by the Governor on June 20, 2025.
Source: Texas Legislature Online, capitol.texas.gov, SB 6 (89th Regular Session)
Alabama SB 270 (2026 Regular Session)
Authored by Sen. Lance Bell. Sets the criteria the Alabama Public Service Commission must apply when reviewing retail electric contracts between utilities and large-load data center customers of 150 megawatts or more. Contracts must ensure the utility recovers its incremental cost to serve the load and produce a net benefit for other ratepayers, including potential cost reductions, system efficiency, or local economic growth. Enacted April 17, 2026.
Source: Alabama Legislature, alison.legislature.state.al.us, SB 270 (2026 Regular Session)
Utah HB 76, Data Center Water Transparency Amendments (2026 General Session)
Authored by Rep. Jill Koford. Requires large data centers to notify local water providers before construction begins and to report water consumption, discharge treatment, and reuse both before and during operation. The State Engineer enforces compliance, and the reported data is made public, with protections for genuinely proprietary information. Signed March 23, 2026.
Source: Utah State Legislature, le.utah.gov, HB 76 (2026 General Session)
The pattern across all three: different angles on the same underlying pressure. Texas and Alabama are about who pays when a single facility can draw as much power as a mid-sized city. Utah is about water, the second resource constraint nobody outside the industry was watching two years ago. None of the three bills argue data centers shouldn't be built. All three argue someone has to see the bill before the meter runs.
Where activity is concentrated
| State | Verified bills, 2025–2026 | Notable outcome |
|---|---|---|
| New Jersey | 32 | Multiple water/energy reporting bills active in 2025 and 2026 sessions |
| Virginia | 23 | Second-highest verified bill count in this pull |
| Pennsylvania | 19 | Includes a tax-benefit siting bill tied to clean-energy procurement conditions |
| Minnesota | 14 | Data center regulatory bill enacted as Chapter 12, June 2025 |
| Michigan | 12 | Active pipeline across 2025 and 2026 sessions |
| Illinois | 11 | Multiple data center bills active in the 2026 session, including SB 3120 and SB 3830 |
| New York | 10 | 2026 floor debate over a renewable-sourcing mandate for new data centers |
| West Virginia | 10 | Certified Microgrid Program enacted as Chapter 112, 2025 |
Counts reflect bills whose text explicitly names data centers, verified against USLege's bill data on August 12, 2026. Texas shows a lower count here because its flagship law, SB 6, regulates the same activity as a "large load," not a "data center" by name; see the case study above and the methodology note.
Activity index, by verified bill count
A simple tier ranking based on the verified count of bills explicitly naming data centers in each state's 2025 and 2026 sessions. This is arithmetic, not a judgment about any state's policy direction.
Congress: 7 additional bills at the federal level. "None found" reflects this specific keyword-verified search on August 12, 2026, not a claim that a state has zero underlying grid or data center activity; several of these states surfaced broader grid or energy bills that didn't reference data centers by name.
Watch the debate, not just the bill status
USLege indexes the committee hearing video behind these bills, not just the docket entry. That's the part a status dashboard alone can't give you.
Public Utility Commission and ERCOT staff walk through the large-load interconnection standards adopted under SB 6's batch-zero process, describing more than 1,200 pending interconnection applications and how the rule is meant to keep residential ratepayers from absorbing the cost of new data center demand.
Watch the hearing →Testimony on AB 222 cites the California Energy Commission's own projection that data center electricity use could double within a decade, and that five facilities serving a single AI company could collectively draw more power than 3 million households.
Watch the hearing →Floor debate over a bill requiring new data centers to source at least 90 percent of their electricity from renewable energy, with the sponsor citing NYISO's 2025 Power Trends report that data center demand could add up to 4,000 megawatts of load to the state's grid by 2030, roughly the electricity use of every household in New York combined.
Watch the debate →USLege's legislative calendar tracks which committees are hearing this topic next, and the companion report on AI legislation by state covers the policy layer directly upstream of this one, since AI workloads are the largest driver of the demand this report tracks.
Track every data center and grid bill in every state, live, with the hearing video and transcripts behind each one.
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