How to read the evidence. Each evidence entry gives the exact citation, what the source shows in our words, and a link. Read the original and cut your own card before you run this case; do not read our summaries as evidence in a round.
Framing
We define a moratorium as a temporary federal pause on new hyperscale construction while siting, grid-impact, and cost-allocation standards are written. We weigh on probability and timeframe: harms that are documented now against benefits that depend on projections.
Contention one: data centers are raising the cost of electricity for households
Data center electricity use quadrupled in a decade, from 58 terawatt-hours in 2014 to 176 in 2023, and the Department of Energy's own report projects it to double or triple again by 2028, reaching as much as 12 percent of all U.S. electricity. Utilities meet that demand by building generation and transmission whose costs are recovered from all customers through rates. When the largest new load on the grid is a handful of facilities, every household pays for infrastructure it did not ask for. A moratorium stops the new demand until cost-allocation rules ensure the facilities that create the cost pay it.
Data center electricity use is growing at an accelerating rate
Shehabi, A., et al. (2024). 2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy. eta-publications.lbl.gov
Estimates data center consumption at 176 TWh in 2023 (4.4 percent of U.S. electricity), up from 58 TWh in 2014, and projects 325 to 580 TWh by 2028 (6.7 to 12 percent), with annual growth rising from about 7 percent (2014-2018) to 18 percent (2018-2023) and 13 to 27 percent thereafter.
Impact: higher bills for families who cannot absorb them, in the same years that state legislatures are scrambling to respond. More than 300 data center bills were filed in state legislatures in the first months of 2026, and states including New York have moved toward moratoriums of their own, evidence that the harm is real and present, not speculative.
States are responding with legislation and moratoriums
MultiState (2026). State Data Center Legislation in 2026 Tackles Energy and Tax Issues; Rockefeller Institute of Government (2026). Updates on the Cloud: More Moratoriums on Data Centers. rockinst.org
Track the surge of state bills on data center energy, water, and tax treatment in 2026 and the moratorium proposals that followed, evidence that policymakers treat household cost and grid impact as present problems.
Contention two: the grid cannot absorb the load safely
The growth rate matters more than the total. The Berkeley Lab report finds annual growth accelerating from 7 percent to 18 percent to a projected 13 to 27 percent, faster than utilities have historically added capacity. Rapid, concentrated load growth forces grid operators to defer plant retirements, run older fossil units, and issue reliability warnings. A pause gives planners time to add generation and transmission before demand arrives rather than after.
Utilities have sharply raised load-growth forecasts
Shehabi, A., et al. (2024), section on utility projections. eta-publications.lbl.gov
Notes that utilities such as Southern Company revised expected electricity sales growth from 1 to 2 percent per year to about 6 percent per year for 2025-2028 because of data centers; use with grid-operator reliability assessments for the second contention.
Impact: reliability risk for everyone on the grid, including hospitals and schools, and higher emissions from the fossil plants kept online to meet the surge.
Weighing
- Probability: our harms are in a Department of Energy report and in state legislative records; the con's competitiveness harms rest on a chain of assumptions about where facilities would move and whether that matters.
- Timeframe: bills rise in the next rate case; competitiveness effects, if any, take years.
- Reversibility: a moratorium ends; a rate increase baked into a utility's rate base lasts decades.
Crossfire questions and evidence sources are in the topic primer. Practice against the con case.
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