Overview
- Democrats won key races after campaigning to make data centers pay more of the tab for rising electricity costs, including Abigail Spanberger in Virginia and governor‑elect Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey, while two Democrats captured Georgia utility commission seats.
- Senators Richard Blumenthal and Bernie Sanders pressed the White House over what they called sweetheart deals with Big Tech, as the White House said it declared an energy emergency to fast‑track grid projects and expand coal, gas and nuclear generation.
- PJM capacity payments jumped from about $2.2 billion in 2022 to $14.7 billion in 2024 and $16.1 billion this year, with the market monitor attributing the surge largely to data‑center load and utilities warning those costs flow through to customer bills.
- Utility data show planned data‑center demand is still climbing fast, with PPL reporting Pennsylvania projects rising more than 40% to 20.5 gigawatts and its CEO urging rapid construction of new generation.
- The scale of compute demand keeps expanding, highlighted by OpenAI’s 10‑gigawatt Nvidia systems plan and IEA estimates that computing electricity use could top 1,000 TWh soon, while analysts warn policy pushback could weigh on tech valuations.