By DIANE DENISH
Corner to Corner
diane@dianedenish.com

Affordability simply means something can be afforded—not expensive. Despite the President recently saying, “they have this new word—affordability,” it’s hardly new. It’s the daily reality for most Americans.

In 2025, prices for housing, food, health insurance, and clothing continue to rise. In 2024, Trump made the cost of eggs—inflated by bird flu and higher production costs—a political flashpoint. Today eggs remain 30–50% higher than a year ago.

Consumers feel the squeeze everywhere: food, housing, health care, and now energy. With colder weather arriving, energy costs are moving to the forefront. Recent elections reflected this shift, with candidates in high-profile governor races in New Jersey and Virginia emphasizing fairness for consumers and pushing back against large utilities’ pricing practices.

Why are energy prices rising?

Multiple factors vary by state, but industrial demand is surging as data centers expand. Georgia, Virginia, Texas, and Oregon illustrate how aggressive data center growth is driving higher electricity use. One data center can consume the power of 85,000 homes. That’s now both a policy challenge and a kitchen-table issue for voters.

The core policy question: Who pays for the infrastructure? Should data centers shoulder most of the cost, or should it be spread across all ratepayers, raising everyone’s bills? Some regulators have chosen the latter.

New Mexico’s approach has mixed economic, energy, and environmental considerations, a recent example is the proposed Project Jupiter in Doña Ana County.

Key components include:

• Bonds: Industrial Revenue Bonds up to $165 billion, paired with 30-year property tax abatements across 1,400 acres. Using a PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes) model, the company pays a fixed, typically lower, revenue amount on a guaranteed schedule.
• Rebates: GRT/construction rebates of up to 50%.
• Developer commitments: $50 million for water and wastewater improvements and nearly $7 million for community investments—from a new Boys & Girls Club to habitat restoration.
• Jobs: It’s projected to create 2,500 construction jobs and 750 permanent positions, with commitments to local hiring and use of local businesses for vendor services.

So what’s the concern?

• The project offers economic diversification, job growth, and potential to retain local graduates, likely attracting additional business. But here are some of the concerns:
• The long-term revenue impact of the PILOT arrangement.
• Local concerns about water usage in an already dry region, especially with data centers’ substantial cooling needs.
• The need for firm, enforceable requirements on energy efficiency and clean energy use.
• Community investments must be more than MOUs — they need legally binding guarantees with clawbacks.

And at the kitchen-table level: Doña Ana County and any other county courting a data center should require out-of-state developers to pay their fair share. This means they bear the cost of water and data infrastructure necessary to build and maintain the center and insure they continue to generate their own power on site as planned or pay for their own electric power.

Residential customers should not absorb higher electricity bills to subsidize industrial users. New Mexico’s leaders can learn from states like Georgia, where pro-corporate utility regulators were defeated in 2025 by consumer-focused candidates. Even though New Mexico’s PRC members are appointed, current and future leaders should make residential consumers the center point when considering appointments.

Affordability isn’t an abstract idea. It’s the ability to live and work in a community where fairness comes first and where leaders act to level the playing field — including when it comes to energy costs.