AI’s green tax: Will data centers face special taxation?

A few years ago, the question “does AI use too much electricity?” was treated as a marginal note in drafts of ESG reports. Today the answer is obvious: it does—and at a pace that threatens the stability of power grids. The question that regulators from Brussels to Washington are now asking is different: who will pay for it?

Estimates by international institutions suggest that a special tax on energy consumption by data centers could generate billions of dollars annually, correcting market distortions. According to experts, the current price of AI services is artificially low because it doesn’t account for externalities—such as air pollution or water consumption—that are ultimately borne by citizens rather than technology companies. For business, this is a wake-up call. If AI models become subject to targeted taxation, the entire economics of deployments, from chatbots to advanced predictive systems, could change drastically.