SA国际传谋 has partnered with PolitiFact to fact-check Florida politicians. The Pulitzer Prize-winning team seeks to present the true facts, unaffected by agenda or biases.
Florida gubernatorial candidate James Fishback is a critic of artificial intelligence data centers.
Fishback, who is among candidates competing against frontrunner U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds for the Republican nomination, says AI data centers offer few benefits for Floridians.
"What it actually does, is it drives up your electric bills by 30 or 40%. Anybody want to pay more on their electric bills? Or what it does is, it sucks up 500,000 gallons of water a day and then puts gray water back in the water supply," Fishback said during a in Pensacola.
AI data centers are typically used to train artificial intelligence models, run AI responses and process massive datasets.
show some facilities use at least 500,000 gallons of water a day to cool their equipment. AI data centers are also 肠辞苍蝉耻尘别谤蝉鈥� . However, we found no public data showing they are responsible for 30% or 40% bill increases and Fishback didn鈥檛 respond to PolitiFact鈥檚 questions about his comments.
Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, and state lawmakers from both political parties are pushing to regulate AI data centers. The Florida Senate Feb. 26 with requirements related to moderating electricity rates and water management.
What is a data center?
Data centers house critical software systems and data in rows of computer servers, storage systems and networking equipment.
Any time you send an email, watch a TikTok video or read an article online, you鈥檙e interacting with a data center.
Data centers have existed since the , but their recent expansion to support AI technologies has created mega facilities that consume far more power than previous buildings.
The newest AI data centers often span to , about the size of 750 American football fields.
Meta鈥檚 planned Hyperion AI data center site in the farming community of Richland Parish, Louisiana, could be of Manhattan鈥檚 Central Park.
How do AI data centers use electricity?
Newer data centers can use as much electricity as a small city.
In 2024, U.S. data centers consumed about .
The International Energy Agency that a typical AI data center consumes as much electricity as 100,000 homes annually, and that the largest ones under construction would likely consume 20 times as much.
Without legislative protections, consumers could see their electric bills increase to cover data centers鈥� energy demands, experts said. Consumers often foot the bill for equipment and power grid upgrades that data centers require.
"In general, data centers can raise power bills in Florida," said Ari Peskoe, director of Harvard Law School鈥檚 Electricity Law Initiative. Utility companies are spending "billions of dollars on new infrastructure to provide power to data centers," and utility rate structures allow these costs to be shared across the service territory, raising everyone鈥檚 bills.
Experts said it鈥檚 difficult to estimate how much AI data centers are driving up 肠辞苍蝉耻尘别谤蝉鈥� electric bills.
Utilities and state regulatory commissions shield data center rates from public review, Peskoe said, making it difficult to measure the effect of new data center development.
"How much the impact of large industrial loads on power capacity buildout and wholesale markets is eventually passed down to residential customers is largely confidential and is affected by many factors," said Shaolei Ren, a University of California, Riverside, professor who researches AI鈥檚 environmental footprint.
PolitiFact found no news reports, government analyses or studies that corroborate Fishback鈥檚 figures of 30% to 40% electric bill increases. A few reports detail more modest rate increases because of data centers, and researchers project possible rate hikes in the future.
A June 2025 , for example, found that data centers are poised to raise electric bills by 8% nationwide by 2030, and by 25% in places such as Virginia, which has a of these facilities. One estimated that Virginia electric bills could increase up to 70% to meet data center demand.
The New York Times that electric bills for a typical Ohio household increased at least $15 a month, which would be around an 11% increase based on back-of-the-envelope math, that summer because of data centers.
in November 2025 that electric bills in states with large numbers of AI data centers have climbed much faster than the national average year-over-year. August 2025 prices increased 13% in Virginia, 16% in Illinois and 12% in Ohio compared with the previous year, the outlet found. The national average increase was .
How do AI data centers use water?
Data centers require water to from equipment, such as chips, servers and hard drives, to prevent overheating and maintain performance.
Nearly all data centers require significant water consumption, sometimes
A typical mid-sized data center uses around the amount Fishback cited 鈥� per day 鈥� about as much as 1,000 U.S. households.
A larger AI data center can use up to a day, as much as a 50,000-person city. And, according to recent , some state-of-the-art data centers can use up to 8 million gallons per day.
Approximately evaporates. The remaining 20% is discharged to wastewater processing facilities, which must adhere to guidelines for screening, treatment and disinfection.
Technological advances, such as and , have helped reduce water use. Data centers with , for example, can reduce their freshwater use up to 70%
"Generally, data centers are getting significantly more efficient than they were 10 years ago," said Ren. "On the other hand, the increasing scale of new data centers still drives up their total impacts," such as peak water demand during the hottest days of the year.
Ren co-authored found that data centers鈥� water use creates significant stress on local water systems. Many communities lack the infrastructure to meet peak-day withdrawals, which can lead the facilities to shift to less efficient cooling practices and increase the burden on the power grid.
If current trends continue, the study projected that by 2030, U.S. data centers will require 697 million to 1.451 billion gallons per day at peak capacity 鈥� comparable to the typical daily supply of New York City.
Our ruling
Fishback said AI data centers "drive up electric bills by 30 or 40%" and "suck up 500,000 gallons of water a day."
The facilities are raising 肠辞苍蝉耻尘别谤蝉鈥� electric bills. Rate hike projections in states with high concentrations of data centers come close to Fishback鈥檚 estimate, but we found no public data showing the facilities are currently responsible for 30% or 40% bill increases.
Data centers consume as much as, if not more, than 500,000 gallons a day. Some hyperscale AI facilities are estimated to use 5 million to 8 million gallons a day.
Fishback鈥檚 statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details. We rate it Half True.
Our Sources
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- Environmental and Energy Study Institute, , June 25, 2025
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- The International Energy Agency, , April 10, 2025
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- Brookings Institute, , Nov. 20, 2025
- Email interview, Shaolei Ren, electrical and computer engineering professor at the University of California, Riverside, and leading researcher on the environmental footprint of AI, March 2, 2026
- Email interview, Ari Peskoe, director of Harvard Law School鈥檚 Electricity Law Initiative, March 3, 2026
