North Carolina is becoming one of the nation’s fastest-growing hubs for AI. Data centers promise economic growth, innovation, and new jobs. But they will also increase grid demand and stress on our electricity system. To make the AI boom sustainable, State lawmakers should hit the pause button on data centers until they find ways to control spiking electricity costs and other impacts which, not incidentally, disproportionately affect women.
North Carolina’s electricity costs are expected to hit a record high during this hot summer, on top of which Duke Energy is requesting a rate hike of nearly 12% to be ruled on this fall. Nationwide summer cooling costs have increased 40% since 2020 to a household average of about $800. Already, many people, especially those on Medicare and Medicaid, can’t afford it.
Hotter summers and higher air conditioning costs are on a collision course with data centers and the vast amounts of electricity they demand, which will push electricity prices up further.
More than half of North Carolina’s electricity comes from natural gas and coal, so as electricity demand and costs rise, so will greenhouse gas emissions, touching off a vicious cycle where hotter temperatures drive higher demand to cool homes and data centers, emitting more carbon and raising temperatures, and so on.
It’s not only a pocketbook issue; it’s a public health issue. As temperatures and electricity bills rise, millions of Americans are skipping meals, postponing medical care, and cutting back on utilities, with serious consequences for physical and mental well-being.
It’s also a gender equity issue. Extreme heat is worse for women, especially those who are pregnant or have low incomes. They tend to skip preventive care, reproductive healthcare, or treatment for chronic conditions, and they run higher risks of heat-related illness and long-term health effects.
Women are also disproportionately affected by rising energy costs. In North Carolina, female-headed households with children have six times higher the poverty rate of married-couple households. More women are living on fixed incomes as North Carolina’s population ages (seniors are the fastest growing segment of the state’s population). Women are more likely to manage household finances and shoulder unpaid caregiving responsibilities, and they are the ones who decide whether the family can afford groceries, healthcare, or another week of air conditioning.
These combined factors mean that women bear the brunt of the impacts as the combination of more data centers and hotter weather result in higher electricity demand and prices, worse health effects, higher greenhouse gas emissions, and more climate change.
We need a way off this escalator. New York recently became the first state to pause permitting for the largest data centers while it works to understand and mitigate their impact on electricity demand, utility bills, and the environment.
Before proceeding with permitting, we need to ensure that large data centers pay their fair share of costs, and make long-term investments that reduce household electricity costs.
Lawmakers in Raleigh have already recognized that data centers should not shift electricity costs onto households, and legislators have gotten more active in regulating them. For example, they have proposed large load tariffs that would require data centers to pay a greater share of the infrastructure costs they create.
But lawmakers also need to recognize that rising energy costs disproportionately burden women. Energy affordability programs like the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) should consider take into account caregiving responsibilities, age and whether a household is female-headed, because those are all factors that increase women’s energy burden.
The success of North Carolina’s AI boom should be measured not only by how much innovation it creates, but also by how equitably distributed the data centers’ impacts are North Carolina’s ratepayers, including women who are currently disproportionately affected. The AI-powered future is full of potential, but it won’t be sustainable if it’s built at the expense of their health and well-being.
Jiyeong Pyo is a Stanback Fellow at the Population Institute and a graduate student at Duke University.