Back during the pandemic, when most of us were spending unprecedented amounts of time,

hold up at home watching streaming content, I remember a spate of shocking stories about just

how much energy was required for

Netflix to do its thing. Of course, it's not just Netflix. Every streaming service, every

Bitcoin mine, every online retailer and tech company with giant server farms set up all over

the country is eating through energy 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. By 2028, estimates are they'll

account for something like 12% of all the energy this country uses. From KERA in Dallas, this is

Think. I'm Chris Boyd. That is a lot of power. A lot of strain on energy grids that, as we know, are in some

places still catching up on deferred maintenance or trying to shore up their defenses against

extreme weather events. Tech companies are demanding those upgrades, along with additional

capacity for energy production, which, in theory, benefits all of us lowly residential users too by promising more

robust delivery systems. The thing is, none of those changes will be cheap. And the cost of those

upgrades is being added to our monthly rates, which today are more than 30% higher on average

than they were just five years ago. Karen Wise is here to talk us through what is happening.

She's a technology correspondent for the New York Times, where you can find her article,

Big Tech's AI data centers are driving up electricity bills for everyone. Karen, welcome to think.

Happy to join you. You write that your colleague agreed to cover the annual conference of state utility regulators last

fall, which ordinarily might like feel like drawing the short straw of journalism assignments.

But this one, if you'll pardon the pun, had a certain energy to it, right?

Yes, exactly. My colleague, Ivan Penn, has covered the energy world approximately forever.

He's amazing.

And he's been to these conferences for years. And notice that increasingly, and particularly last year, the nation's biggest tech company,

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