State Senator Chuck Hufstetler gives the public a look at energy
Data centers could be a good thing for Georgia, according to State Sen. Chuck Hufstetler. They are low-traffic, low-noise, low-pollution and are barely noticeable because they blend into the landscape. They also bring in millions of tax dollars to counties that approve them.
The deciding factor on whether a data center is good for a county depends on local government officials, he said. Hufstetler said the money brought in from data centers could be used to offset taxes or to build infrastructure but how it’s spent is up to county officials.
Hufstetler spoke about data center and Georgia Power bills during a meeting in Cartersville hosted by Americans for Prosperity.
The problem, Hufstetler said, is that counties and the State of Georgia offer sales and use tax exemptions as a tax incentive to build. That means local residents pick up the additional cost. The state senator said state officials underestimated the number of data centers wanting to locate here.
“That was the part that probably caught everybody a little off guard,” he said.
Georgia approved $186 million in tax breaks this fiscal year that ended Monday and it’s expected to be $280 million next fiscal year. Thirty-seven states offer similar incentives. Virginia is topping the list for data center construction with Georgia settling into second place.
Northern Virginia is getting 31 percent of its total tax revenue from property and other taxes paid by data centers. However, Ohio’s tax incentives means the state is paying $1 million in lost revenue for every job created by a data center.
A unique problem with data centers is the amount of power and water required to keep them running, according to Hufstetler. One uses the same amount of electricity as the entire State of Florida.
That much energy requires infrastructure. Dominion Energy, which supplies power to parts of Virginia, said it needed $23 million in infrastructure and then came back stating it needed more because of expected demand by 2039. Residential customers would be required to pay for it.
“Residential electricity bills for this were going to go up 50 percent,” Hufstetler said.
In Georgia, Hufstetler said the Public Service Commission (PSC) approves what Georgia Power asks 99 percent of the time. Georgia joins Alabama, Hawaii, Connecticut, and West Virginia as the states with the highest utility cost.
Georgia Power has gotten six rate increases since 2022.
“The PSC hasn’t done their job, in my opinion, of keeping the numbers down,” Hufstetler said.
The biggest problem with Georgia Power is that there are incentives for them to keep building capital outlay projects, even when they aren’t needed. Hufstetler said the power giant makes a 12 percent markup in profit for every capital outlay project.
Georgia Power and the media keeps saying there is an increased need for more energy but numbers show differently, according to Hufstetler. He said there hasn’t been an increase in energy consumption in 13 years even with increased populations. The reason is that energy efficiency offset higher use, he said.
Hufstetler said he had a bill that created a consumer utility council (CUD) that protects power customers from utility abuses but it wasn’t approved. He plans to push for it again this next session. He said 46 other states have something similar.