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Issue 100: Data Centres Paid Only 38% of the Grid Costs They Caused, Cornell Study Finds

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Cornell researchers reported in Nature Energy on Monday that data centres paid only 38% of the grid infrastructure costs linked to their growth across four major U.S. power grids in 2025, $3.12 billion of an $8.25 billion bill, leaving $5.13 billion largely to households, with the poorest paying extra energy costs of up to 28% of their incomes. The same day the U.S. Senate voted to advance a bipartisan permitting bill that would make data centres pay the full cost of the grid upgrades they trigger while loosening environmental reviews, which critics say will speed gas-fired campuses. SoftBank, Grab and Petros committed $1.85 billion of seed capital toward 5 gigawatts of AI capacity in Malaysia, Thailand issued its first environmental rules for large data centres, and Meituan published the weights of its 1.6-trillion-parameter LongCat-2.5 model under the MIT licence.

Date: 2026-11-10
Updated: 2026-11-10 06:30
Status: LIVE

Broadcast

Cornell researchers found that data centres paid $3.12 billion of the $8.25 billion in grid costs linked to their growth across four U.S. grids last year, leaving most of the rest to households. The Senate advanced a permitting bill on the same day that would bill data centres for the upgrades they trigger while easing the environmental reviews that slow them down. SoftBank and Grab put $1.85 billion behind a 5 GW plan in Malaysia, and Thailand answered the regional rush with its first environmental rules for the industry. Meituan opened the weights of a 1.6-trillion-parameter model to anyone. The cost of the clusters is finally being counted, and the builders are offering to pay it if the permits come faster.

Watch

• Boise City Council public comment on the mega data centre moratorium, Tue. Nov. 10 at 6 p.m.
• Wilmington, Ohio, Planning Commission special meeting on the AWS site plan, Tue. Nov. 10 at 4:30 p.m.
• Final Senate vote on the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act before the Congress ends in January
• ERCOT's community survey findings on data centres, due to the Texas commission on or before Dec. 10
• Hyperscaler customers named for the SoftBank and Grab projects in Sarawak and Peninsular Malaysia

Stories

Cornell study finds data centres paid only 38% of the grid costs tied to their growth

Cornell researchers analysing four major U.S. power grids from 2020 to 2025 found that data centres raised wholesale prices and paid $3.12 billion of an $8.25 billion infrastructure bill in 2025, according to a study published Nov. 9 in Nature Energy. The remaining $5.13 billion fell largely on residents, and the lowest-income households saw extra energy costs of up to 28% of their incomes.
-- The first peer-reviewed tally of who pays for AI's grid build-out finds households carrying most of it, which hands regulators and voters a number to bill back.
2026-11-09 / Cornell Chronicle / energy / local / #cornell-study-finds-data-centres-paid-only-38-of

Senate advances permitting bill that would bill data centres for grid upgrades but ease their construction

The U.S. Senate voted on Monday to advance the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act, which would force data centres to pay the full cost of the grid upgrades they trigger and reform transmission planning. Environmental groups say the bill also strips back environmental protections and could put more gas-powered data centres on public lands; its sponsors want it passed before the Congress ends in January.
-- One study cited in the debate estimates data centres would pay about $35 billion more in transmission charges over ten years, a price the industry may accept in exchange for faster permits.
2026-11-09 / TIME / energy / central / #senate-advances-permitting-bill-that-would-bill-

SoftBank, Grab and Petros commit $1.85 billion toward 5 gigawatts of AI capacity in Malaysia

SoftBank Group, Grab and the Sarawak state oil company Petros signed joint development agreements for $1.85 billion of initial seed capital to build AI data centres in Sarawak and Peninsular Malaysia, with a long-term target of 5 GW or more. SoftBank supplies $1 billion and Grab $750 million, with further building to be funded by outside investors, hyperscaler customers and non-recourse project finance.
-- The money is staged against customer contracts, so the 5 GW is a target for renting capacity to cloud giants, not compute already bought.
2026-11-09 / SoftBank Group / chip, energy / central / #softbank-grab-and-petros-commit-1-85-billion-tow

Thailand imposes its first environmental rules on large data centres

Thailand will require large data centres to meet stricter environmental standards under the country's first regulation written for the industry, aimed at preserving water and electricity. Construction of new data centres had been suspended for months while the government drafted the rules.
-- Southeast Asia has been the overflow market for capacity that cannot find power in the U.S. and Europe, and it is now writing its own conditions on water and electricity.
2026-11-10 / Nikkei Asia / energy / local / #thailand-imposes-its-first-environmental-rules-o

Meituan releases the weights of its 1.6-trillion-parameter LongCat-2.5 under the MIT licence

Meituan published LongCat-2.5, a multimodal mixture-of-experts model with 1.6 trillion total parameters and about 48 billion active per token, on Hugging Face under the MIT licence a week after its formal launch. The model card reports INT4 quantization of expert weights for deployment on Chinese AI accelerators and scores close to closed frontier models on several coding and agent benchmarks.
-- A permissive licence lets any company host or distil a near-frontier model without paying the lab, although running it still takes a server rack rather than a desk.
2026-11-09 / Hugging Face / efficiency / local / #meituan-releases-the-weights-of-its-1-6-trillion

Axis
local [########################------] central
Score: 81   clusters still winning   0
A Cornell study found data centres covered only 38% of the grid costs they caused in 2025, the Senate advanced a permitting bill that would bill them for upgrades but ease their path, SoftBank and Grab put $1.85 billion behind 5 GW in Malaysia, Thailand set its first data centre environmental rules, and Meituan opened LongCat-2.5 under MIT. The score holds at 81.

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