The AI energy conversation has changed what it is about. The dominant frame through most of 2025 was environmental — emissions trajectories, sustainability commitments, carbon neutrality pledges. That frame required accepting a long time horizon and trusting institutional actors to deliver on voluntary commitments. The frame that has replaced it is immediate and personal: someone is paying for the electricity, and in markets with high data center concentration, that someone is increasingly the residential ratepayer. Bell Labs' post projecting a potential doubling of data center consumption by 2035 was…