When members of Congress return home for the summer, few issues will confront them more quickly than the explosion of data center development.
Across the country, voters are asking the same basic questions: Will the AI boom raise my electricity bill? Will it strain the grid during peak demand? Will my community be asked to absorb the land-use, noise, and infrastructure burden while someone else captures the upside?
Those are fair questions. They are not anti-technology or anti-growth. They are what people ask when they’re promised an AI future without an explanation of who pays for it.
Conservatives should take those concerns seriously. Families should not be forced to subsidize billion-dollar computing facilities. Local communities should not be kept in the dark. And lawmakers should not pretend that every objection to a data center is just NIMBYism. The backlash is real. In our June 2026 national survey, voters opposed an AI data center being built in their community by more than two to one — 62% to 27% — with nearly half strongly opposed.
But the right response is not a moratorium. It is more power. That means building the energy resources that can meet demand on the timeline communities actually face.
Right now, solar and battery energy storage are among the only major energy resources that can be deployed quickly enough and affordably enough to keep pace with rising demand. In fact, they have accounted for more than 80% of all new power added to the grid during the Trump administration.
Voters are ready for that buildout. In the same survey in which they rejected data centers, nearly two-thirds of Americans said they would welcome a solar farm in their own community — support on par with an Amazon distribution center or a new manufacturing plant. Americans are not against building. They are against being handed the costs of the AI boom without the power to pay for it.
The scale of the challenge is not theoretical. A June 2026 analysis from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that data centers could more than double their electricity use by 2030 and represent more than 40% of U.S. electricity demand growth over the next five years. The question is no longer whether AI needs significant power. It is whether America will build it in time.
That is why conservatives should champion energy abundance. Natural gas matters. Nuclear matters. Transmission matters. So do solar and battery storage, because they are practical tools that can be deployed relatively quickly, add meaningful capacity, and help meet demand during the very hours when the grid is under pressure.
This is not a partisan issue. In our January survey of the likely 2026 electorate, solar was one of the best-liked industries in America — viewed favorably by 67% of voters. Trump voters view solar companies favorably by nearly two to one, and in rural America, solar is favorably viewed by a wide margin.
In fast-growing states, solar is already helping utilities and grid operators keep pace with rising load, while batteries are increasingly shifting that power into the evening hours, when families come home, air conditioners are running, and solar output begins to fall.
Texas offers a useful example. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) says wind and solar met 36% of ERCOT demand in the first nine months of 2025, while batteries increasingly helped supply evening electricity as solar output declined. EIA also forecasts that utility-scale solar in ERCOT will exceed coal generation on an annual basis for the first time in 2026.
Some critics will say that these projects simply create another land-use problem. That objection deserves a factual answer, too. A recent interactive tool released by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) does just that, showing that solar uses just 0.04% of total U.S. land and 0.07% of U.S. farmland, with no state using more than 0.5% of its prime farmland for solar. Not every project belongs everywhere, and communities deserve transparency and respect for legitimate local concerns. But conservatives should be wary of turning every concern into a veto over the infrastructure America needs to power its future.
The alternative to energy abundance isn’t standing still. It’s falling behind. It means delays, special deals, local moratoria, higher prices, and growing resentment. That is bad for families, bad for the grid, and bad for American competitiveness at a moment when China is not slowing down.
Lawmakers going home this summer do not need a better slogan on AI. They need a better answer on power. Large loads should pay their fair share. Communities should get straight answers. And America should build more energy of every kind, including the solar and storage projects already helping fast-growing states, many of which are traditional conservative strongholds, add real power on timelines that match the urgency of the moment.
AI won’t run on talking points. It will run on affordable, abundant electricity. The market is already pointing us toward the fastest, most affordable path to more power. Let’s take it.
