WASHINGTON, D.C. — On February 27th, Duke Energy CEO Harry Sideris appeared on CNBC’s Power Lunch. In an interview with Brian Sullivan, Sideris said, “Every new data center that we’re signing up, every new gigawatt of data center, is actually going to reduce the cost to our customers.”

Sullivan asked, “How is that possible? Listen, in Loudoun County, Virginia—data center capital of America–electricity costs have actually come down, so there is a precedent, but you can’t blame people for being skeptical to ‘oh sure, big tech is going to pay their own way.’ How does it actually work?”

Sideris further explains that costs are lowered because data centers not only pay their fair share, but also take the cost burden of infrastructure investment away from everyday Americans: “What we do is we calculate the revenue requirement from all those investments that are going in to build the infrastructure needed to power these data centers and that’s what their rate is based off of. So we actually collect the revenue from them covering the costs of those investments, not spreading it out to the rest of the customer base.”

Sideris’ comments are not only true for Duke Energy’s 8.6 million customers, but also the broader United States. A Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory report late last year found that “state-level load growth in recent years (through 2024) has tended to reduce average retail electricity prices.”

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