Overview

• An As You Sow and Sierra Club report warns speculative and duplicative data‑center power requests are inflating demand forecasts and skewing grid planning.
• In the Southeast, utilities are projecting up to four times the demand growth suggested by independent analyses, with a separate report finding utilities nationwide plan for roughly 50% more growth than tech firms expect.
• Despite the uncertainty, proposed U.S. gas additions since early 2023 could expand the gas fleet by nearly one third, including Entergy’s plan for three new plants to serve a Meta data center in Louisiana.
• Utilities have acknowledged the risk of exaggeration, with Vistra Energy’s CEO saying interconnection requests may be overstated by three to five times.
• Policy debates focus on who pays and what gets built, with calls to tie incentives to efficiency and disclosure as Virginia’s watchdog tallies nearly $1 billion a year in data‑center tax exemptions and Georgia projects about 80% of future load growth from the sector.