Older Oklahomans are putting state lawmakers and other government leaders on notice—support the cause for more transparency from data center developers and protect ratepayers from added electricity-production costs or else be voted out of office.
A recent Oklahoma AARP survey (@aarp.org/okutility) (found that Oklahomans not only want transparency from the developers but assurances that existing residential utility customers won’t bear the costs of building new infrastructure to support data centers.
“Virtually all Oklahomans 50-plus (96%) believe it is important that electricity rates paid by large data centers are set through a transparent, public process. Many would support allowing data centers to sell their unused power back to utility companies, but only if this results in lower utility bills for Oklahoma residents (71%),” reported the recently-released AARP survey.
At a recent AARP appearance, Sean Voskuhl, State Director of AARP Oklahoma said utility bills for Oklahomans have risen about 30% in the past four years and he expects another 10 percent to 14 percent increase this year.
Costs to climb
He pointed to the more than $1 billion request by Public Service Company of Oklahoma to expand energy-production facilities with a cost to be borne in part by residential ratepayers.
“But what we’ve seen is that the residential growth is nearly flat, yet residential customers are asked to subsidize these large load users, and it’s really not sustainable for many older Oklahomans,” claimed Voskuhl.
The state AARP Director said the survey found as a result of growing electricity costs, 40% of those who responded had made cuts in groceries, 22% paid bills late and 19% took out more debt and cut back on medical expenses including prescription drugs.
Voskuhl praised some efforts in the Oklahoma legislature to protect ratepayers from the large-load data centers and pointed to House Bill 2992 by Rep. Brad Boles of Marlow.
“What we’ve also seen in our survey is that older Oklahomans expect our policymakers to step in and help out. 92% of older Oklahomans agreed that state policymakers should ensure existing residential customers do not pay for the cost of serving new data centers. So again, that just shows you customers don’t want to pay for those additional costs and subsidize large industrial users.”
National issue
Jenn Jones, VP of Government Affairs for the national AARP joined Voskuhl’s conference call and said the issue is a national concern too. She said the rapid expansion of large-scale data centers is a major driver of higher electricity costs.
“AARP’s position is very clear. Everyday households should not be asked to subsidize the private infrastructure costs of data centers. Those costs should be paid by the companies that create them, not quietly shifted onto residential utility bills. And this matters because the impact is already being felt.”