* New York Times…

Across the country, Democrats have seized on rising anxiety over electricity costs and data centers in what could be a template for the 2026 midterm elections.

In Virginia, Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger pledged during her campaign to lower energy bills and make data centers pay more. In the House of Delegates, one Democratic challenger unseated a Republican incumbent by focusing on curbing the proliferation of data centers in Loudoun County and the exurbs of the nation’s capital.

In New Jersey, Governor-elect Mikie Sherrill promised to declare a state of emergency on utility costs and freeze rates. And in Memphis, State Representative Justin J. Pearson, who is challenging Representative Steve Cohen in a high-profile Democratic primary next year, has vowed to fight a supercomputer by Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, that would be located in a predominantly Black neighborhood.

Strong opposition by citizens forced the Tucson City Council in August to pull the plug on an Amazon data center slated for that Arizona city, and then in September forced Google to call off one in Indianapolis.

“Electricity is the new price of eggs,” said Charles Hua, executive director of Powerlines, a nonpartisan organization which aims to modernize utility regulations and reduce power bills. “This is a defining moment for politicians of all stripes — what’s your answer to lowering utility bills? Because I think consumers and voters are looking for leadership on this.”

* AP…

Past due balances to utility companies jumped 9.7% annually to $789 between the April-June periods of 2024 and 2025, said The Century Foundation, a liberal think tank, and the advocacy group Protect Borrowers. The increase has overlapped with a 12% jump in monthly energy bills during the same period.

* Illinois’ electricity costs have also been rising fast, and were a major component of the recent energy omnibus bill…

A new report compiled by the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee Minority projected that Illinoisans could pay up to $200 more for electricity this year compared to last, an increase of more than 15%. […]

The bill that cleared the General Assembly [last month] funds energy storage systems through a new charge to Illinois electric customers that will take effect in 2030. The bill also lifts a longtime ban on new nuclear power developments and gives new authority to state utility regulators.

The bill incentivizes new storage projects, which state officials at the Illinois Power Agency found will suppress electricity prices in an analysis they provided to lawmakers. It also mandates new programs to decrease strain on the grid, like energy efficiency programs.

* Illinois has a strong subsidy program for data centers, which is backed by powerful construction unions. Worker demand is pushing wages up, but a massive labor shortage is growing. Wall St. Journal…

Data centers don’t employ many workers once they are actually built. During construction, though, they are a hive of workers pouring concrete walls and foundations, wiring electric panels and installing equipment such as power generators and chillers to ensure servers are cooled to a precise temperature at all times. […]

Given such complexity and high demand, workers who move into the data-center industry—in roles ranging from electricians to project managers—often earn 25% to 30% more than they did before, said Jake Rasweiler, senior vice president of data centers at Kelly Services, a staffing and recruitment firm. […]

The effects are starting to pile up. A survey by the Uptime Institute of data-center equipment manufacturers, engineers and construction companies found that 52% said staffing shortages on sites had caused business disruptions, up from 43% last year. Contractors working on data centers have an average backlog of 10.9 months of work, compared with eight months for their peers, according to data from ABC.

* Gov. Pritzker has long been a strong supporter of the subsidy program. From last year…

A Texas-based company broke ground on a new data center in Aurora on Wednesday, the latest in a boom of data storage facility developments in northern Illinois.

Gov. JB Pritzker at the groundbreaking hailed the project as another victory for his administration’s economic development strategy and noted the project will bring with it hundreds of union construction jobs.

* But the future looks dicey. The Economist…

On November 20th American statisticians released the results of a survey. Buried in the data is a trend with implications for trillions of dollars of spending. Researchers at the Census Bureau ask firms if they have used artificial intelligence “in producing goods and services” in the past two weeks. Recently, we estimate, the employment-weighted share of Americans using AI at work has fallen by a percentage point, and now sits at 11% (see chart 1). Adoption has fallen sharply at the largest businesses, those employing over 250 people. Three years into the generative-AI wave, demand for the technology looks surprisingly flimsy.

Whether AI adoption is fast or slow has profound consequences. For the world to reap productivity gains from AI, normal businesses must incorporate the tech into their day-to-day operations. It is also the most important question in determining whether or not the world is in an AI bubble. From today until 2030 big tech firms will spend $5trn on infrastructure to supply AI services. To make those investments worthwhile, they will need on the order of $650bn a year in AI revenues, according to JPMorgan Chase, a bank, up from about $50bn a year today. People paying for AI in their personal lives will probably buy only a fraction of what is ultimately required. Businesses must do the rest.

* The country got a taste of how reliant business has become on centralized data centers when a key Aurora center went down. Crain’s…

The Aurora data center that supports the CME installed backup cooling capacity after a catastrophic outage that roiled world markets on Friday. […]

The cooling system failed at the data-center complex late Thursday and temperatures soared to over 100F (38C). While CME’s disaster recovery plan calls for a move to a data center in the New York area, the exchange opted against switching to a backup facility because the information it had pointed to a brief outage.

* Related…

* Endeavour Energy, behind proposed 560-acre DeKalb data center, won’t use water to cool servers, plans show: According to the city, Edged has proposed a data center build that uses air instead of water to cool its servers. Natural gas instead of diesel would fuel the generators that spin and create electrical energy to run the operation, according to the project proposal.

* Potential data center in Illinois village raises local concerns: At the meeting, residents fear their local infrastructure cannot support a large industrial facility. “We are in a very dry area in terms of the groundwater,” Raney said. She noted that when a fire broke out at the High Point Golf Course, land later acquired by Constellation, crews had to haul water from multiple towns. “They actually had to drive to get water from like 10 other municipalities near us because we do not have the fire hydrant system,” she said.

* Opinion: Illinois consumers can’t foot the bill for runaway data-center demand: While there’s a lot we can do here in Illinois to protect consumers from data center costs, we can’t do it alone. PJM — a little-known organization that has a tremendous impact on how affordable and clean electricity is for 67 million customers across 13 states — has been struggling to manage runaway data center energy demand. Current PJM policy socializes the costs of those centers across all customers, which means everyday consumers — you and me — are paying big electric bills to cover the wealthiest companies in the world. At a recent media briefing hosted by the Citizens Utility Board, representatives from the Natural Resources Defense Council warned that if nothing is done to manage the estimated 30 gigawatts of data centers seeking to connect to the grid, the PJM region could face rolling blackouts and bill spikes averaging $70 a month. … Although no plan gained decisive support, an advisory vote from members produced striking results: The comprehensive proposal that won the most votes called for the toughest standards. That plan — from the Independent Market Monitor — took a wise “Bring Your Own Generation” approach that would prohibit data centers from connecting to the grid until they brought their own new electricity resources to power their facilities.

* AI data centers’ massive demand for aluminum is crushing the US aluminum industry: But data centers guzzle enormous amounts of power, and electricity prices are skyrocketing. In the US alone, electricity demand is expected to grow five to 10 times faster over the next 10 years than it did in the previous decade, per Bank of America. For aluminum smelters, this is a problem. Producing aluminum is incredibly energy-intensive, and without cheap power, those smelters can’t operate.

* Flood of AI Bonds Adds to Pressure on Markets: Companies were able to complete their sales. But some had to pay unexpectedly high interest rates. Prices of bonds from the companies have also been sliding—a sign that investors were caught off guard by the sheer quantity of bonds entering the market and of growing concern about the worsening credit metrics of the businesses. Stock investors, already nervous about the sky-high valuations of AI businesses, have taken note of the weakness in the bond market. Meanwhile, the cost of insuring those bonds using credit-default swaps also has climbed, with negative sentiments from different groups of investors feeding into each other.

* Trump’s push for more AI data centers faces backlash from his own voters: Political leaders across the U.S. are urging a rapid expansion of data-center capacity and new power production to keep the country competitive in AI. Trump, a Republican, is promoting the build-out as an economic and national security priority and has directed his administration to bypass environmental rules and permitting that give local communities a voice. In Pennsylvania, Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro and Republican Senator Dave McCormick are courting developers with incentives and infrastructure upgrades to attract investment in the fast-growing industry.

* Critics scoff after Microsoft warns AI feature can infect machines and pilfer data: Microsoft’s warning on Tuesday that an experimental AI agent integrated into Windows can infect devices and pilfer sensitive user data has set off a familiar response from security-minded critics: Why is Big Tech so intent on pushing new features before their dangerous behaviors can be fully understood and contained? … Both flaws can be exploited in attacks that exfiltrate sensitive data, run malicious code, and steal cryptocurrency. So far, these vulnerabilities have proved impossible for developers to prevent and, in many cases, can only be fixed using bug-specific workarounds developed once a vulnerability has been discovered.

* Health care AI will generate real value in 2026: West Monroe: A multisite survey of physicians revealed lower rates of self-reported clinician burnout and less after-hour documentation. A second study of a UChicago Medicine pilot compared ambient AI scribe users to a “look-alike” group of non-users. That study found clinicians using the ambient clinical documentation tool spent 8.5% less total time in the electronic health records, with more than 15% less time spent composing notes.