Why Your Bill Keeps Going Up
Florida generates 75% of its electricity from natural gas — and produces none of it. Every bit of gas is imported through pipelines from other states. When gas prices go up anywhere in the country, your electric bill goes up here. You don’t get a vote. The utility just passes the cost through automatically.
Right now, gas prices are being pushed up by two big forces: companies exporting American gas overseas, and massive data centers burning through power in Virginia and Ohio. Florida families and businesses are projected to face a $21 billion hit from rising gas costs through 2034.
Ghost Data Centers and Your Electric Bill
You might have read about data center electricity costs in Virginia or Ohio and thought: that’s their problem. It’s not. Here’s the chain.
AI data centers, concentrated in Northern Virginia, tripled the region’s forecasted power demand. The capacity auction price in the PJM grid — which covers 13 states and 67 million people — jumped from $29/MW-day to $329/MW-day. There are currently 700 GW in grid connection requests in PJM territory, versus 477 GW of total US generating capacity. Most of those requests are speculative — when Ohio required 85% upfront payment, more than half of the queued projects vanished overnight. They were never real. They were options on grid capacity, and ratepayers were underwriting the premium.
Florida’s grid is market-separated from PJM. Their electricity prices don’t flow into ours directly. But natural gas — the fuel that generates 75% of our electricity — is a nationally traded commodity.
How Virginia Data Centers Raise Florida Bills
- Data centers in Virginia drive new gas plant construction (because renewables can’t scale fast enough to meet the demand growth).
- New gas plants increase national demand for natural gas at the Henry Hub trading point.
- Henry Hub prices rise because supply growth lags demand (data centers + LNG exports + industrial reshoring).
- Florida utilities buy gas at higher prices on the same national market, through the same pipelines.
- Higher fuel costs are passed through to Florida ratepayers via fuel adjustment clauses — automatically.
Gas prices nearly doubled from $2.19/MMBtu in 2024 to roughly $4.00/MMBtu in 2026. EIA projects them continuing to rise toward $5.00/MMBtu by 2034. Data centers are one of the two biggest upward forces on natural gas prices nationally, alongside LNG exports. Florida is among the states most exposed because of its extreme dependence on gas-fired generation.
It’s not that their electric bill gets added to ours. It’s that they’re burning through the same fuel we depend on, and when they drive up the price of that fuel nationally, we pay more — just like when demand for oil goes up in one part of the country, gas station prices go up everywhere. Except Florida is more vulnerable than most states because we generate 75% of our electricity from natural gas and produce none of it.
Data Centers Coming to FL-3
This isn’t just a Virginia problem anymore.
- Citrus County (borders FL-3) — An 813-acre site near Lecanto has been proposed for data center development. This is the closest proposed hyperscale facility to our district.
- Polk County — A 1,330-acre campus near Fort Meade would consume over 1 gigawatt at full capacity, roughly equivalent to powering 750,000 homes.
Florida passed SB 484 (effective July 1, 2026), which says data center costs cannot be shifted to residential ratepayers. But the law leaves enforcement to utilities and the PSC — the same PSC that approved FPL’s $945 million rate increase for 2026. The House version stripped transparency requirements, letting state agencies sign NDAs with data center companies that keep location plans secret for up to a year.
The law says the right thing. Whether it does the right thing depends on who’s watching.
LNG Exports: Selling Our Fuel to Lower Someone Else’s Bill
US LNG exports grew from 0.06% of domestic production in 2014 to 11.6% in 2024, with capacity projected to grow another 84% by 2029. The EIA is explicit: “Higher natural gas prices in 2025 and 2026 are the result of strong export growth that persistently outpaces U.S. natural gas production.”
The Department of Energy’s own study projects a 31% wholesale gas price increase from unconstrained export growth. Resources for the Future estimates the impact at more than double DOE’s figure.
Texas, Louisiana, and Pennsylvania get jobs and royalty revenue from gas production. Florida just pays the bill. We’re the customer, not the supplier. Export policy is being set by producing states at our expense.
This is potentially a bipartisan issue. American families shouldn’t pay higher bills so foreign countries get cheap gas. Energy independence means affordable domestic energy first.
The Build-and-Bill Model
Regulated utilities make their profit from building infrastructure, not from selling electricity. Every dollar of capital expenditure earns a guaranteed rate of return. The incentive is to build as much as possible, regardless of whether it’s needed.
Nationwide, utilities have filed $31 billion in rate hike requests — equal to the entire previous decade combined. Data center operators sign confidential deals with utilities. The utility builds transmission lines, substations, and generation capacity. Construction costs are spread across all ratepayers. The data center’s actual rates stay confidential. Residential customers subsidize commercial infrastructure they didn’t ask for and can’t review.
The broken system IS the business model. Utilities don’t make money fixing it. They make money building for it.
What a Congressman Can Actually Do
A congressman can’t directly order FPL to lower your rates. The Florida PSC has that authority. But federal actions shape the cost inputs that drive those rates. Here’s what I’d do:
Day one: co-sponsor and introduce
- SHIELD Act — Creates a separate rate class for facilities consuming over 75 MW, ensuring residential customers don’t subsidize data center grid upgrades. Rep. Kathy Castor (FL-14) is already a co-sponsor — natural Florida coalition partner.
- Warren-Hawley data center energy disclosure — Bipartisan mandatory reporting to EIA for data center energy use, rates paid, and grid upgrade costs. I’d introduce the House companion bill.
- LNG export consumer impact requirements — Co-sponsor H.R. 381, requiring DOE to determine that exports won’t materially increase energy prices for US consumers.
First year: build the coalition
- Florida delegation letter to DOE on LNG export consumer impact — Florida has 28 House members, most representing consumers, not gas producers.
- CRS study on disproportionate impact of LNG export policy on gas-import-dependent states. Any member can request this.
- Fight to restore clean energy tax credits that reduce gas dependency — the cheapest path to lower bills is burning less gas.
Lower the cost of solar for homeowners
- Restore and expand federal solar tax credits. The 30% residential solar credit expired at the end of 2025. Push to bring it back. Solar is the fastest way to cut your gas dependency — and your electric bill.
- Right to generate your own energy. You should be able to put solar panels on your roof without needing permission from a utility company. Energy independence starts at the household level.
- Decentralized energy co-ops. Homeowners generating their own solar power should be able to form co-ops that buy and sell electricity together. Under current Florida law, individual net metering and group-buy solar co-ops are legal today, but peer-to-peer electricity sales and community solar need new legislation — and that fight is mostly in Tallahassee, not Washington. I’ll push for federal incentives, but the bigger fight is getting Florida to let you own your own energy.
- Battery systems as the go-between. Plugging solar panels directly into the grid can cause power spikes — that’s one reason utilities push back. The solution is a home battery that acts as a buffer, smoothing the feed-in. Products like the Tesla Powerwall, Enphase IQ Battery, and others already do this. The technology exists and is getting cheaper every year.
Longer term: structural reform
- Codify FERC Order 1920 on long-term transmission planning (currently under legal challenge).
- Federal efficiency standards for large data centers — Germany already mandates them. The US has no standard.
- Support a Strategic Natural Gas Reserve to buffer domestic prices during export-driven or weather-driven spikes.
Energy Connects to Every Issue
- Economy — When energy costs rise, everything costs more. Fertilizer, food, transportation, manufacturing — the supply chain runs on fuel. The strait jacket starts here.
- Healthcare — Rural hospitals run on razor margins. Energy cost spikes hit facilities with the least negotiating power hardest.
- Food & Agriculture — Propane for crop drying, natural gas for fertilizer production, fuel for transportation. Every link in the food chain runs on energy.
- Housing — Electricity is the second-biggest housing cost after the mortgage or rent itself. Building hurricane-rated, energy-efficient homes is the long-term fix.