Georgia is facing the largest demand for electricity in its history, driven by nation-leading datacenter construction.

The Georgia Power company has made an unprecedented bid to the agency that oversees the utility for about 10 additional gigawatts of energy in the coming years – enough to power 8.3m homes, at an estimated cost of nearly $16bn, according to the Southern Environmental Law Center.

But those huge numbers are not primarily for homes or local businesses in Georgia. Instead about 80% of the company’s ask is driven by datacenters, primarily for artificial intelligence, according to Tom Krause, spokesperson for the state’s public service commission, or PSC.

It is the largest increase ever considered by the commission in a multiyear plan and comes as the Atlanta metro area led the nation in datacenter construction last year – a phenomenon playing out across the US and increasingly sparking protests and pushback. The PSC’s five members will be charged with deciding how much energy the state needs, when it’s needed and the best way to meet that need, Krause said.

Three days of public hearings on the issue starting on Tuesday have drawn interest from a range of organizations and individuals with concerns ranging from rising utility prices to the accelerating climate crisis due to fossil fuel use. With datacenters expanding across the nation, these worries are increasingly common in other states too.

“In many ways, Georgia is a microcosm for the US in terms of the country’s energy future,” said Charles Hua, founder and executive director of PowerLines, an organization that works on lowering utility bills and involving communities more in decisions about energy. “Georgia is facing rising energy demand and rising energy prices, mostly due to datacenters,” he said.

A “statewide mobilization” by about 20 organizations, including Black Voters Matter and the People’s Campaign, is being promoted to draw people to the hearings.

Mark McLaurin, state director for Climate Power, said: “There’s an organic outrage at power bills and the stress they place on consumers.” He noted that the PSC approved six rate increases sought by Georgia Power in the last two years.

Connie Di Cicco, political director for the Georgia Conservation Voters Education Fund, pointed out that Georgia Power’s 2.5 million residential customers were charged higher rates for electricity than its industrial customers. “When people find this out, they lose their mind!” she said.

McLaurin also saw utility bills “as a way to get people to care about what the PSC does”, he said. His organization will also bring to the hearings a focus on developing more renewable energy sources to meet demand for electricity. Georgia Power has announced plans to develop three new natural gas turbines, he noted.

“We’re concerned about the pace of decarbonization and cleaning up the [energy] grid – about Georgia Power’s seeming fallback to fossil fuels,” said Maggie Shober, research director for the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.

Shober’s organization has signed up to provide expert testimony at the hearings, which she described as “a real pivotal moment”.

“It’s a chance PSC has to hold Georgia Power accountable,” Shober said. The researcher also said she’s “not in denial” about datacenters and their impact on electricity. “That’s not realistic,” she said.

Instead, Shober said that the actual energy needs of datacenters should be closely monitored, and that datacenters should pay for the cost of generating additional energy.

State senator ​​Chuck Hufstetler introduced legislation earlier this year to force datacenters to shoulder more of the cost and to prohibit the PSC from raising utility bills due to increased electricity needs. The PSC has passed a rule to this effect, but in the absence of a law governing the issue, “it’s hard to know what their definitions of ‘costs’ is”, Hufstetler said. “They have secret contracts that the public doesn’t see.”

As with others concerned about the issue, the legislator said he doesn’t see datacenters “as something that’s not needed. We just need to make sure they pay the costs of electricity and water,” he said.

Daniel Blackman, a regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency under the Biden administration, plans to provide public comment at the hearings. “The thing about datacenters is, it’s no longer ‘Are they coming?’” he said. “They’re already here. They’re no longer confined to rural areas.”

What is needed, he said, is “bad actor legislation” – to provide some guardrails on companies behind datacenters.

He also hopes attention around the upcoming hearings helps build capacity among grassroots organizations to work together on educating people about datacenters, and their relationship to utility bills.

“This is going to become an issue that will be important in upcoming elections,” he said – starting next month, when progressive Democrats have the opportunity to take two of five seats at the PSC. Early voting has already begun in Georgia, one of only 10 states where voters elect utility regulators. Election day is 4 November.

If Democrats Alicia Johnson and Peter Hubbard win, the commission would lose its all-Republican makeup for the first time in nearly two decades. Another seat will be up for election next year.

This could influence how the state supplies electricity to datacenters, observers said. “If these seats flip, the commission now includes a diversity of opinion,” McLaurin said, adding that he was “clear-eyed” about regulators not stopping datacenters altogether, and hoping instead to see “a commitment to a diversity of energy sources”.