Washington, September 9, 2026 (Yes Punjab News) Indian-American Congressman Suhas Subramanyam has introduced a four-bill legislative package aimed at regulating the rapid expansion of data centres in the United States and preventing the resulting infrastructure costs from being passed on to American households.
The proposed measures would require large data centres to bear the cost of energy infrastructure needed to serve their facilities, while also establishing systems to measure their water and electricity consumption and assess their potential impact on surrounding communities, the environment and national security.
Subramanyam, a Democrat representing Virginia’s 10th Congressional District, said data-centre development had increasingly been driven by short-term commercial interests rather than long-term planning.
“Our region is home to the fourth largest concentration of data centres in the world, and many more are on the way,” he said, adding that rising utility bills and new transmission lines were creating concerns among residents over noise, environmental effects and property values.
The package comprises the Responsible Data Center Siting Act, Data Center Fair Share Act, Data Infrastructure Energy Measurement and Standards Act and Data Infrastructure Risk Reduction Act.
The Responsible Data Center Siting Act would direct the Energy Secretary to establish national best practices for data-centre locations, taking into account energy availability, utility costs, water and electricity use, environmental consequences, noise, workforce needs, tax revenue and national-security risks.
The Data Center Fair Share Act would require data centres and other major electricity consumers to cover the full cost of grid and power-generation upgrades required to serve them. States would be required to establish special tariffs for large electricity users, with non-compliant states potentially losing access to federal highway funds.
The third bill would task the National Institute of Standards and Technology with developing technical standards for measuring data-centre energy and water consumption.
The Data Infrastructure Risk Reduction Act would require the federal government to develop a strategy to protect communities located near data centres and associated infrastructure from foreign or domestic adversaries.
The package has been co-sponsored by Democratic Representatives Mike Quigley, Andre Carson, Hillary Scholten, Veronica Escobar, Greg Stanton and Mike Levin.
Northern Virginia is one of the world’s largest data-centre markets, supported by extensive fibre-optic networks, major electricity infrastructure and proximity to the federal government. While the facilities underpin cloud computing, artificial intelligence and other digital services, their growing power and water requirements have prompted concerns over infrastructure, transmission lines and utility costs.
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