Ameren says Armory data center wouldn’t raise electric bills in St. Louis80%
By Katie Grawitch0%
2/19/2026, 7:33:49 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 20 faulty reasoning types, including Ambiguity (Equivocation), Straw Man, and Self-Serving Bias, with Framing Effect as the most egregious example at 22.2% saturation with 183 hits. Analysis detected 958 faulty-reasoning hits from 825 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 72% and a BS Rank of 80% (3,517 of 16,813 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 79.10% of the article peer group.
Ameren promised that Missouri residents would not see increased rate costs from large data centers at a meeting with a St. Louis Board of Aldermen committee on Wednesday.
The Public Infrastructure and Utilities Committee heard statements from the utility company and advocacy entity Consumers Council of Missouri about new terms of service and special rates for customers that use huge amounts of energy.
The large-load tariffs are intended to both attract data centers to the region and ensure they are paying their fair share.
Missouri’s regulatory body, the Public Service Commission, approved those rates in November, and they went into effect in December.
Ameren spokesperson Patrick Brown said a proposed data center near the Armory would not increase residents’ electric bills because it falls under the large-load tariff on projects requiring upward of 75 megawatts of power.
“We're not talking about building power plants for any particular customer or any particular sector,” Brown said.
“There was a lot of talk of Ameren’s discretion and ability to just do things and bill you for it, but we make very few decisions like this on our own or in a vacuum.”
In regulatory filings asking for permission to build new power plants, Ameren has recently cited new large-load customers among multiple reasons to build.
Alderwoman Anne Schweitzer asked Ameren officials to clarify what costs are absorbed by all Ameren consumers.
Owners of large-load facilities must pay all costs associated with connecting to Ameren’s power grid, said James O’Mara, Ameren Missouri’s manager of economic development.
But when pressed, O’Mara clarified that all Ameren customers, including residential customers, pay for expanding the grid through building new power plants through rate increases, and that may be needed to accommodate large-load customers.
“That would just be part of our traditional resource planning,” O’Mara said.
O’Mara and John Coffman with the Consumers Council also said large-load consumers have benefited the electrical grid as a whole by spreading operating costs more efficiently.
But Coffman added that the council is concerned that projects with unprecedented energy demand will require Ameren to build more power plants.
“Even though there are provisions in this new large load tariff (to address) the connection costs, the transmission and the distribution system, it doesn't necessarily address the power plants,” Coffman said.
Ameren recently signed binding agreements to build multiple large data centers in Missouri totaling 2.2 gigawatts of demand.
A representative from Ameren said the company’s current statewide energy portfolio is 10 gigawatts, meaning those new agreements alone would constitute a 22% increase in its total energy portfolio.
But Alderman Michael Browning, the committee chair, said some of Ameren’s expansion decisions are at the behest of state lawmakers campaigning for data centers.
“If Gov. Kehoe and his merry band of Republicans are just really eager to make this the data center capital of the nation, then you're obligated to meet that demand,” Browning said to an Ameren representative.
Recent rate hikes
During public comment, St. Louis resident Sylvia Kueny told the committee many of her neighbors can’t afford even a small rate increase.
“It might not seem like most people are living that close to the line, but I know that some of my neighbors truly are,” Kueny said.
“So when there's an 11% rate increase, they don't have 11% to give on that rate.”
In a recent report, the council found that rate increases outpaced inflation and weekly wage increases in Missouri because of infrastructure investments.
Brown attributed recent rate hikes to clean energy expansions as part of Ameren’s plan to reach net zero carbon emission by 2045.
“Bringing renewables online is expensive,” Brown said.
“As we retire power plants, we necessarily are bringing new generation online.”
Part of Ameren’s new generation includes two recently approved natural gas plants.
Ameren Missouri’s regulatory vice president, Warren Wood, said in a meeting last year that the most recent rate increase covered a long list of infrastructure investments, not just renewable energy.
“We’re hardening the grid, replacing old power lines, strengthening poles, upgrading substations, and you’re receiving some energy from new energy resources,” Wood said.
“We’re also installing some switches that can automatically detect and restore outages.”
The council’s executive director, Sandra Padgett, told STLPR that low-income residents may not be able to afford even a slight increase in utility costs from large-load facilities.
“The data centers are not going to be the ones dealing with people who are evicted from their apartments,” Padgett said.
“Just because it’s spread out doesn’t mean that it’s going to make it easier for people to keep up.”
She said her team would like to see regulations that offset higher utility costs for data centers’ water use as well, such as a low-income customer assistance program or a contribution to infrastructure improvements.
“Many people say, ‘Oh, water bills are so low,’” Padgett said.
“But if you are low income, it’s a stress.
I just don’t think people understand.”
STLPR's Kate Grumke contributed to this report.
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