A 27-page report from an American congressional investigation shows what the world''s largest data center companies answered when Congress asked who pays the bill. The answers are theirs, in writing.
The report and the letters
The report, Power and Profits, was published by Senators Warren, Van Hollen and Blumenthal. The letters were sent in December 2025 to seven companies: Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, CoreWeave, Digital Realty and Equinix.
What the answers show
On full energy cost: the companies said the commitment applies only to infrastructure serving them exclusively, and opposed the allocation standard that makes the new consumer pay for the expansion it causes.
On transparency: the four giants routinely ask for confidentiality agreements with utilities, landowners and, in some cases, public agents. Meta justified it: confidentiality in development increases efficiency and speed.
On jobs: none of the seven companies was able to present comprehensive quantitative evidence of job creation.
The report''s conclusion
The industry is running over local communities and using its economic resources to pit states against each other, in a race to the bottom where public managers feel they have no alternative but to concede, leaving ordinary citizens stuck with the bills.
No company publicly contested the report.
What remains for whoever designs infrastructure
Energy cost is only the visible tip. The layer that decides whether the project is viable is cost allocation and community acceptance. And it does not appear in any capex spreadsheet.
It is the chapter recent cases already opened: Texas freezing licenses and charging deposits, AI buying power plants to skip the queue, and the global race for clean energy that favors markets with generation to spare. Whoever designs with transparent cost allocation and the community in the project from the first draft gains timeline; whoever hides, gains contestation.
Conclusion
The report has a value no marketing campaign replaces: the answers are from the companies, in writing. From now on, a data center spreadsheet without the cost allocation and community acceptance layer is not incomplete, it is wrong. Capex says what the project costs; the community says whether it exists.