In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, once described his state as the “epicenter of A.I. development.” But this month Mr. Abbott ordered a statewide audit of data centers and their compliance with local electricity rules, part of a series of recent actions targeting the industry.

“Simply put, Texans must come first,” the governor said at the time.

Major companies including Anthropic, Meta, Alphabet and OpenAI have pledged to furnish more of their own power for data centers, so that they do not burden local residents with larger bills. Some have already done so, in accordance with a new White House pact meant to reduce costs.

But the industry’s efforts have varied in consequence — creating new energy demands in some communities, while reducing costs in others. Nor has progress come fast enough to satisfy all states. Over the past two years, roughly 30 states have considered legislation related to data center energy use, including special tariffs on the largest electricity users, including data centers, according to the University of Virginia tracker.

The list includes New Jersey, where lawmakers this year adopted a bill by Assemblyman David Bailey, a Democrat, who cited concerns about power costs as “one of the No. 1 sources of calls we were getting to our district office.”

The proposal angered the Data Center Coalition, which tried to circulate among legislators an edited version of the bill that would have exempted some facilities from the fees. But lawmakers still muscled through a version of the tariff, which Mr. Bailey said would “make sure the companies and developers were going to pay.”

“We’re learning from Ohio, we’re learning from Illinois, we’re learning from Virginia,” he said, of other states that had asserted their authority. “What are we really getting? What’s our return on investment here?”