Average electricity bills have risen 27% in the last five years. Thanks to the AI data-center boom, they’re likely to rise even faster in the years ahead. The energy demands of these centers could more than double electricity prices by the end of the next decade, according to a report by Dominion Energy.

In most of the country, households and big industries buy from the same electricity market. So when industry demands more energy, all of our prices increase.

Data centers run 24/7, powering and cooling thousands of processor chips. Just 16 chips can draw ten households’ worth of electricity. Elon Musk’s new data center in Memphis, TN—which he’s naming “Colossus”—will run 550,000 chips. That’s potentially over 340,000 homes’ worth of electricity—the same as the number of housing units in the whole of Washington, DC.

Bloomberg found that most areas seeing price hikes are within 50 miles of big data centers. Customers near a data center at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore pay more than double what they did in 2020.

These AI factories are also using large amounts of water and spiking carbon emissions. Musk’s data center can’t rely on the wholesale electricity market in Memphis, TN. Instead, he is using natural gas turbines to power the data center. In the poor, predominantly Black neighborhood nearby, people can already smell the pollutants.

Google has recorded a 48% increase in its emission of greenhouse gases since 2019, mostly due to data centers and company operations. Last year alone, Amazon’s emissions increased by nearly four million metric tons—for a total of 68.25 million metric tons, up from 64.38 million in 2023—because of their data centers and delivery fleet.

Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, and previously a “treehugger billionaire,” is now urging against “climate alarmism.” His change of heart might have something to do with Microsoft’s emissions skyrocketing by 30% since 2020 due to data center expansions.

This is only the beginning. Elon Musk and Johns Hopkins haven’t even finished their data centers—and many more are under construction. Data centers used around 4% of US electricity in 2023. By 2028 we could see 12% or more electricity sucked away by tech billionaires.

As long as this technology remains under capitalist control, it will mean job cuts, increased cost of living, and accelerated climate change. While a tiny minority profit, the rest of us will be made to bear the consequences.