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Winners of the Global Energy Race Are Being Decided

Floor Speech

Date: Feb. 25, 2026
Location: Washington, DC

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Mr. SUBRAMANYAM. Mr. Speaker, I thank everyone here today for all their hard work and leadership.

One of the things that the President said last night is he is doing so much to lower energy costs through drill, baby, drill and through all of the other actions he has taken.

I think on the campaign he said he was going to lower energy prices by 50 percent. Yet, last year, Americans paid more than 13 percent for their electricity bills compared to the previous year. The big reason is that the big, ugly bill added about $250 billion to Americans' energy bills by picking energy favorites and slowing down new technology, so energy prices continue to rise for Americans.

Something the President said is that the data centers will help lower Americans' energy costs. One of the assumptions there is that they will pay for their own energy infrastructure and essentially not shift that burden to Virginians and Americans.

In Virginia, we are facing an additional 9 percent increase in energy costs this year, and data centers are a big part of that. They consume about 25 percent of the energy and could be more soon. It could be up to 40 percent. Last year, more than $4.3 billion in transmission infrastructure costs for data centers were passed on to ratepayers.

With this pledge, basically the President is asking for technology companies building data centers to pledge to build their own energy infrastructure along with their data centers moving forward and not shift the costs to ratepayers.

I welcome the idea of making sure that ratepayers aren't shouldering the burden of energy infrastructure and energy generation because the American people deserve better than that.

One of the things I would like to see more of is rather than a pledge, a concrete proposal, actual regulatory framework that will protect people's energy costs.

That is what we are doing in Virginia. Down in Richmond, there is now legislation that they are moving forward to essentially make sure that ratepayers aren't paying for the energy generation of data centers.

I look forward to having this bipartisan conversation, but I know that if the President doesn't come up with the framework that we need, then it is going to be another promise made, promise not kept when it comes to energy prices.

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