(Colorado Sen. Cathy Kipp speaks at a rally for a bill she’s sponsored that would place new regulations on large-load data centers in Colorado. March 13, 2026.)
While Oklahoma adopted a data center bill to protect consumers from higher electricity rates, Colorado lawmakers attempted to create environmental regulations for data center development.
But state Sen. Cathy Kipp, D-Fort Collins, the main advocate for the effort, asked for an indefinite postponement of her Senate Bill 102.
She made the request after the the measure was rewritten to include a tax incentive for data centers. But some Senators couldn’t agree with the tax incentives and the Senate Transportation and Energy committee voted down the legislation unanimously, putting an end to the measure Kipp has been working on for about a year, reported Colorado Public Radio.
The bill as originally written, would have required data center developers to pay the full cost for the power required to operate the center. It would have also ensured that data centers don’t interfere with Colorado’s targets for greenhouse gas emission reductions.
Despite the setback this year, Sen. Kipp isn’t giving up and will return next year with a renewed effort.
“We will bring this bill back next session, but the industry needs to understand the moment,” Kipp said. “These companies need to come to the table understanding the harms their operations can cause the communities and to our grid and be accountable for
“Colorado communities are deeply worried about what this unrestrained development means for their water, their air quality, their electricity bills, their farmland and their neighborhoods,” she added.
Similar concerns have been voiced by Oklahoma legislators as well as residents of cities and locations where developers have proposed data centers. As a result, the legislature adopted Rep. Brad Boles’ HB2992 which was passed and signed into law last week by Gov. Kevin Stitt.
The new law, the Data Center Consumer Ratepayer Protection Act of 2026, is designed to shield Oklahoma families and small businesses from higher utility costs linked to large-scale energy users such as data centers. The measure establishes guidelines for how all Oklahoma electric suppliers and regulators manage the growing energy demands of data centers, cryptocurrency mining operations and artificial intelligence facilities.