There is no federal law that protects American’s access to power over data centers during emergencies. Because of this the Department of Energy has had to use a 1935 emergency law continually to prevent Data Centers from killing Americans:

It’s July 2nd 2026. A heatwave hits 13 states and D.C. Temperatures exceed 100F. Energy demand from AC alone shatters 2006 records. All of this before Data Center power demand. Hyperscale AI data centers across Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania each pull 50+MW from the grid, around the clock, that's more than entire small cities.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright had to invoke Section 202(c) of the 1935 Federal Power Act with 2 emergency orders to make sure the power got to hospitals before these facilities.

He has had to do this an unprecedented amount in 2026.

If Mr. Wright had not taken action the PJM grid would have entered a level 3 alert and rolling blackouts would have hit 13 states and D.C. causing power to halt at hospitals, nursing homes, and the homes of the sick and elderly. Certainly people would have died.

Heres the thing.

We pay for the electric grid. With our taxes. With our money. Our utilities are the commons.

Data centers are extracting a disproportionate share of a finite, shared resource.

Dangerously so, during peak demand and during emergencies. These costs and dangers have accumulated without the input of the commons. The people who funded the infrastructure: us.

We can't keep addressing this problem with emergency orders. Or one day, it wont happen fast enough and people will die.

Individual data center operators are innately incentivized to draw as much cheap grid power as they can. Allowing private industry to over-eat from a publicly funded resource, without the public ever voting on it. The grid is a public good, not a commodity market where residents have to outbid corporations to keep their lights on during a heat wave.

Our ask: 

A mandatory curtailment hierarchy during extreme weather. Data centers first, residents last. It’s common sense.

When the grid is strained, keeping people alive comes first. We protect Grandma’s AC and hospital power over AI image generation and training. Period.

We want to codify what the DOE has already done ad hoc during specific emergencies. Large load industrial customers should be deprioritized and pay their fair share under grid strain. At least 18 states have introduced bills requiring data centers to fund infrastructure improvements and participate in demand response programs to prevent residential customers from experiencing crazy rate hikes.

We need a federal baseline.

Policy: 

1. A first to curtail mandate (data centers power gets cut before grandma during things like extreme heat)
2. No “critical load” gaming - utilities cannot classify data centers as a critical load to exempt them from emergency curtailment
3. Data center operators must pay 100% of interconnection costs and more: the public subsidizes NOTHING without vote.
4. Data centers above 15 MW must enroll in grid operators demand response programs and demonstrate curtailment capability.
5. The FERC should be directed by Congress to establish a mandatory curtailment hierarchy by amending the Federal Power Act with a load priority section for weather events such as extreme heat.
6. Skirting the grid and connecting to power plants should not be a get out of jail free card for data centers. If a data center draws from a plant that could serve the grid during a power emergency, they cannot take priority. Senator Tom Cotton, R-AR’s DATA Act is a direct example of this sneakyness.
7. Carve outs for critical cloud based emergency services but only if the data center can publicly annually demonstrate the fraction of their load that is critical infrastructure.
8. Data centers must be excluded from base capacity auction load forecasts and procure capacity separately. Congress should direct FERC to require RTOs to remove large-load forecasts (>15 MW) from base residual auctions and instead run separate backstop auctions where data center operators procure and pay for their own capacity.  MANDATED. Not Optional. Applied to every RTO nationwide. No American family should see their bill go up $70/month because a grid operator guessed that a data center might get built three years from now.