According to reports, America is facing an energy crisis, with demand for energy soaring due to the proliferation of AI and hyperscale data centers – which can use as much energy as almost 40,000 homes – the boom in advanced manufacturing, and the movement toward electrification.

Written by economist Ike Brannon, a senior fellow at the foundation, and economist Sam Wolf, the report explains partly why so many utilities and regional transmission organizations are having to get creative to meet demand.

“During the previous two decades, power demand in the United States scarcely grew as the U.S. shifted from a manufacturing to a services economy,” the authors wrote.

However, the sharp increase in demand is eating up the spare capacity in the U.S. power grid, which helps protect against brownouts and blackouts in the case of extreme weather and temporary outages by power plants. That increase contributed to a huge spike in capacity market prices at the most recent auction held by the Mid-Atlantic regional transmission organization PJM.

Prices jumped from $29 to $270 per megawatt-day “across the PJM region” and from $29 to $444 in parts of Virginia, home to more than half of the nation’s data centers, according to the study.

Aaron Ruby, a spokesperson for Dominion Energy, a major East Coast utility company and the primary utility in Virginia, vehemently disagreed with the study’s claim that prices could rise to 70% in the next decade, saying the number was “way off” for the commonwealth.

“We just released a 15-year plan forecasting residential electric bills through 2039, and they’re only projected to grow by about 2.5% a year, which is lower than normal inflation,” Ruby wrote in an email to The Center Square. “Our residential rates are among the most affordable in the country. They’re 14% below the national average.”

But the surge in power demand from data centers is projected to be so great the study’s authors argue the center cannot hold (while acknowledging that rate setting is “inherently political” and “difficult to forecast” and that it’s “unclear who will bear the cost of these price increases”).

“In Virginia, the high regulation of price and capacity has kept the increased demand from data centers from impacting prices paid by ordinary consumers, but such insulation cannot hold much longer without risking service interruptions or brownouts,” the report reads. “As data center growth expands, price increases may need to flow through to consumers more rapidly.”

In Maryland, electricity bills “are projected to increase by somewhere between two to 24% in 2025, depending on the region,” the authors added.

Other states like Georgia, Ohio, Texas, Illinois and Arizona may come to resemble Virginia in the years ahead, according to the study.

The report’s authors suggest that policymakers craft and implement policy that will make data centers part of the solution to the disproportionate demand they place on the grid, including charging them more for the energy they use.

“To ease the burden on households and small businesses, AI companies should be required to bear the additional costs of the energy they consume. This could include charging data centers higher fees to reflect their disproportionate impact on electricity markets,” the report reads.

Brannon and Wolf also recommend that states and local governments stop subsidizing data center construction, arguing that the economic benefits aren’t worth the cost to taxpayers and that utility providers start including minimum take clauses in their contracts with data centers.

“A minimum take clause guarantees a minimum payment from a utility user—such as a data center—regardless of how much energy it purchases, which provides the utility with a modicum of revenue certainty,” the authors wrote.

The study concludes with several other recommendations, saying that “paying for grid modernization… can be accommodated within existing rate structures, but only if the data centers bear their proportionate share of these costs.”

The title of the research article is: Effects of system-sanctioned framing on climate awareness and environmental action in the United States and beyond. Sounds pretty heady, I know. But I bought it and read it so you don’t have to.

The purpose of the study is to determine whether people are more likely to get on board with climate action if they are first exposed to “patriotic” and “system-sanctioned” messaging. My Spidey sense is already tingling, because there’s a hypothesis embedded in that purpose and it doesn’t feel right.

They didn’t go into the study wondering whether people might be influenced by some sort of messaging (that would sound like objective science). They began with a specific message—which means someone wanted to know whether that particular message would have the desired effect. That sounds like an agenda.

So let’s consider the inciting incident for such a story. The authors note that planetary concern alone has failed to inspire enough people to make the sacrifices needed to avert an alleged disaster. It seems many of us, like the poor R2 unit, have a bad motivator. So we need something else. Something more visceral. Something that really moves us.

That something, it turns out, is the status quo. Here in America we care deeply about preserving our way of life. And we should—it’s a good way. In fact, the authors suggest the status quo is what keeps many people from taking action. Their version of supposedly saving the planet requires changes that impact our way of life, and we naturally resist such changes—especially if we’re not convinced the cause is real. So someone hatched a plan to use our defense against us. And they tested their idea with this study.

Here’s how they did it. They presented participants with a series of statements and sentimental photos that connect environmental themes with happiness and life in America. It ends with Let’s keep the United States as it should be. Shrewd.

After looking at the “messaging,” the participants answered questions about the severity of climate change and what should be done about it—from raising taxes to government-mandated “sustainable” energy. The control group, who only read a random passage from Great Expectations, answered the same questions.

And now for the exciting conclusion:

In a large, nationally representative U.S. sample, we found that the system-sanctioned change intervention successfully increased liberal-leftists’ as well as conservative-rightists’ belief in climate change; support for pro-environmental policies; and willingness to share climate information on social media.

Sounds Orwellian? I thought so too.

It’s probably no coincidence this study was published on September 9 and the presidential debate was one day later. Kudos to the Harris team for picking it up and weaving it in so quickly—unless perhaps they had an advance copy, since it was accepted by PNAS in June.

There’s a lot I could say about the study itself and how the “messaging” is constructed using the principle rules of propaganda. But few of us are truly innocent of that charge, even for honorable purposes. Nonetheless, the mission for this sort of message is not to win on logical grounds. In the words of the research article:

We tested an experimental manipulation derived from system justification theory in which pro-environmental initiatives were framed as patriotic and necessary to maintain the American “way of life.”

From the text it is objectively clear that someone wants to manipulate us. Someone wants us to hear something that makes us go along with what they want.

If the intention were genuinely about protecting our way of life, then the environment is a consideration. But in today’s world the chief factor is affordable, reliable energy—without which everything stops. If we truly want to keep the United States as it should be, then it all starts with energy. And the only proven solution at this time comes from cheap, abundant oil and natural gas. We have plenty of that in America to maintain our way of life for a long time. At least until someone perfects dilithium crystals.

This allegedly scientific study is not about preserving our way of life. But it certainly provides a base from which to launch a barrage of new messaging.

Coming soon to a campaign near you.

Michael O’Sullivan is Program Director and COO for Blue Energy Nation, a non-profit committed to educating young people on energy realities. He is also a popular podcast host and an advocate for smart energy choices.