Last week, VPIRG asked its members to let the representatives who voted to sustain Governor Scott’s veto of the data center bill (H.727) know they were disappointed. Many did — thank you.
It’s come to our attention that some of the representatives who voted with the governor are now offering a striking explanation for their vote: that the final version of the bill protecting Vermonters from AI data centers was “worse” than the less-protective version the House passed earlier in the session. I want to take a moment to explain why that argument doesn’t hold up — because you may hear some version of it yourself.
First, some credit where it’s due. The House — and the House Energy Committee in particular — deserves real credit for making sure a data center bill moved this year, as that simply would not have happened without their leadership. They built a solid framework to fill potential gaps in Vermont’s existing regulations. And when the final, stronger bill came back from the Senate, the House passed it in a nearly unanimous voice vote.1
The earlier House version was a good start. But a good start is something you build on. And given that AI data centers are being built by the largest corporations in the history of money, a “better safe than sorry” approach — with robust safeguards — is simply the responsible way to go. That’s exactly what the Senate’s changes did: they took a good start and made it genuinely strong.2
Here’s what actually changed.
On protecting your wallet:
- The House version required the contract between a data center and its utility to “mitigate the risk of other ratepayer classes paying unwarranted costs.”
- The Senate changed that to “ensure that other ratepayer classes are insulated from all costs associated with data center deployment.”
That difference matters enormously. “Mitigate” means reduce — not eliminate.
The House language, while directionally correct, would have left the door open for regular Vermonters to pick up some of the tab for data centers anyway. The Senate slammed that door shut. Ratepayers would be insulated from all costs. That’s something you’d hope every elected official could get behind.
On protecting the climate and the grid:
- The House had broad language about grid management.
- The Senate built it into a robust set of real requirements.
The final version of the bill included requiring data centers to:
- Maximize on-site renewable energy,
- Fund energy-saving projects for the surrounding community, like weatherization and EV charging infrastructure, and,
- Critically, it barred data centers from running on-site fossil fuel generators except during genuine emergencies. That last piece matters a great deal given the well-documented air pollution AI data centers have caused elsewhere by running diesel and gas generators around the clock.3, 4
So when a representative says the final bill was “worse,” what they’re really saying is that a vaguer, less protective bill was somehow better than one that fully protected ratepayers and did far more to cut climate pollution. The only way that math works is if you see weaker protection as the goal.
Unfortunately, that appears to be the governor’s view — and now, it seems, the view of those who voted to sustain his veto. One more thing worth addressing. The governor argued in his veto letter that the bill was bad for business — that it added “new and unnecessary regulatory systems.”5 But here’s the reality: many other states are, in fact, adding regulations to “large loads” generally — meaning any business that uses a lot of electricity.6, 7 Vermont’s legislature deliberately chose not to do that. This bill was narrowly tailored to data centers alone — a genuinely new and uniquely power-hungry class of electricity user.
The bill went out of its way not to touch other Vermont businesses, addressing the exact concern the governor raised before he ever raised it.
So here’s where things stand:
- The earlier House bill was a good start, but vague in places and left loopholes.
- The bill the House and Senate passed overwhelmingly and sent to the governor was specific — and far stronger in protecting ratepayers and cutting climate pollution.
- Every version of the bill was about data centers, and only data centers.
- The House voted overwhelmingly for both versions — right up until the last day of the session, when every voting House Republican voted to kill it.
That’s the truth of what happened. If your representative tells you otherwise, I hope you’ll feel equipped to push back.
If a representative who voted to sustain the veto tells you they just wish the legislature had stuck with the earlier, vaguer, weaker version of the bill, consider asking them a simple question: which specific provision that protected ratepayers from costs, or cut climate pollution, did they think made the bill worse? It’s worth hearing them try to answer.
We’re not done with this fight. Vermont needs these protections, and we’ll be back next session to get them across the finish line.
1 – https://www.youtube.com/live/Hd369WipleM?t=4840s
2 – https://www.vpirg.org/issues/clean-energy/vermonts-data-center-bill-clears-senate-committee-5-0-heres-whats-in-it/
3 – https://archive.is/jqpwd
4 – https://www.selc.org/news/xai-built-an-illegal-power-plant-to-power-its-data-center/
5 – https://governor.vermont.gov/sites/scott/files/documents/H.727%20Veto%20Letter.pdf
6 – https://www.utilitydive.com/news/large-load-tariffs-proliferate-as-states-take-more-active-role-in-data-cent/816184/
7 – https://affordability-toolkit.rmi.org/policies/tariffs-for-large-load-customers