H.R. 6529 would require the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to hold a conference about strategies and rate structures for allocating electricity costs associated with large loads (such as data centers used for artificial intelligence models). The bill would require FERC to report to the Congress about the outcomes of that conference.
CBO expects that implementing H.R. 6529 would have a small effect on FERC’s workload and increase its costs by less than $500,000. Because FERC is authorized to collect fees to recover its costs (which are controlled through annual appropriation acts), CBO estimates that the change in net discretionary spending for FERC from implementing the bill would be negligible over the 2026-2031 period.
If FERC increases fees as a result of the bill, it would increase the cost of an existing mandate on public and private entities, such as electric utilities, that are required to pay those fees. CBO estimates that any incremental change in fees collected would fall below the annual thresholds established in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act for intergovernmental and private-sector mandates ($107 million and $214 million in 2026, respectively, adjusted annually for inflation).
The CBO staff contacts for this estimate are David Rafferty (for federal costs) and Brandon Lever (for mandates). The estimate was reviewed by H. Samuel Papenfuss, Deputy Director of Budget Analysis.
