You’re Already Paying for the AI Boom — Before It Even Works
Somewhere on your electric bill, there’s a charge you never agreed to. It’s small — a few dollars a month — and it’s paying for a power plant that doesn’t exist yet.
A Reuters investigation published today found that at least 40 U.S. states now allow utilities to charge customers for power grid projects before they’re completed. The mechanism is called Construction Work In Progress, or CWIP, and it’s been spreading rapidly as data centers surge across the country to power artificial intelligence. A decade ago, fewer than 20 states had these provisions. Now the number has doubled.
The concept sounds reasonable on paper: let utilities collect money upfront to reduce borrowing costs, theoretically passing savings to ratepayers over the long term. In practice, it shifts financial risk from utility shareholders to captive customers who have no ability to opt out or negotiate.
The consequences are already visible. Georgia ratepayers have paid roughly $1,000 each since 2009 for the Vogtle nuclear reactors, which ran seven years late and more than doubled their original $14 billion estimate to $35 billion. In Virginia, home to the world’s largest concentration of data centers, customers have already handed Dominion Energy about $2 billion for an offshore wind farm still under construction — an average of $11.23 per month on their bills. In Nevada, one utility’s own consultant found a ratepayer would need to stay on the system for 52 years before receiving any net benefit from CWIP.
The Grid Squeeze Meets the AI Demand Boom
U.S. power prices have risen roughly 40 percent over the past five years. Double-digit increases hit data-center hotspots like Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. The average ratepayer has no idea how much of that is financing someone else’s construction project.
The utilities’ argument is straightforward: the grid is dangerously thin. Reserve buffers are shrinking. Demand is forecast to grow more than 2 percent per year through 2045 after decades of near-zero growth. Billions in new generation and transmission are needed, and CWIP reduces the financing cost.
What the utilities don’t emphasize is the other half of the deal. CWIP incentives are routinely coupled with provisions that shield the company from delays, cancellations, and cost overruns. The ratepayer absorbs the risk. The utility earns a regulated rate of return — 9 to 12 percent — on every dollar of capital spending regardless of whether the project delivers on schedule or over budget.
The Accountability Gap
This matters because the U.S. power sector has a decades-long track record of failed, delayed, and over-budget projects. If a nuclear plant or massive transmission line cannot attract private capital without a public backstop, that is the market telling you it may not be a responsible investment. Instead, the risk is transferred to captive households who never chose to become venture investors in grid infrastructure.
Missouri’s governor reversed a 50-year ban on CWIP last year — specifically to meet rising data-center demand. Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma, and North Carolina adopted similar provisions since 2024. In every case, the political logic was the same: attract AI investment to the state. In every case, existing residents are the ones writing the check.
The Georgia experience shows where this leads politically. In November, voters unseated two Republican public service commissioners in a referendum fueled by anti-CWIP backlash. The structural lesson is clear: when you shift financial risk to millions of households, the accountability question eventually arrives at the ballot box.
What Ordinary People Should Understand
The AI boom is real. The grid upgrades are probably necessary. But the question is never whether to build — it’s who pays, who bears the risk, and whether citizens have any meaningful voice in the decision.
Right now, in 40 states, the answer is: you pay, you bear the risk, and you probably don’t even know you’re doing it.
Source: Reuters, “Why millions of Americans pay for unfinished electricity projects,” by Tim McLaughlin, May 9, 2026.