Canceled Data Centers Curb Georgia’s Projected Power Surge

Current conditions: Snow is blanketing parts of the Mountain West and Upper Midwest, making travel difficult in Montana, North Dakota, and Minnesota • Winds of up to 40 miles per hour could disrupt some air travel through Chicago and Detroit • A cold snap in China is set to drop temperatures by double digit degrees Fahrenheit in northern areas.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Canceled data centers shave gigawatts off a utility giant’s project pipeline

In just the last three months, Georgia Power has removed 6 gigawatts of projected demand from its 2030s forecasts — enough to serve every household in the Atlanta metropolitan area more than three times over, according to a filing Friday with the Georgia Public Service Commission. The cause: canceled or postponed data center developments. Projects totaling nearly 6 gigawatts of projected demand by the mid 2030s fell off the books. Of the 28 large power user projects the Southern Company-owned utility disclosed in its report to regulators, 18 have broken ground and 10 are pending constructions. That indicates that the developers are pushing to make sure they advance, and suggests the dip in the last quarter may not extend. In the report, Utility Dive noted, Georgia Power said the “majority of new generation” the company wanted approval for was “not backed by” contracts with large power users.

The adjustment comes as Georgia Power pushes regulators to approve a large new buildout of power plants that could raise monthly bills by $20, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. Voters ousted long-time Republicans from the Public Service Commission, electing two Democrats who campaigned on slashing rising rates, Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo reported earlier this month. Data centers, however, are proliferating elsewhere. Just last night, Amazon unveiled plans to invest $15 billion in data center complexes in northern Indiana.

2. In California, rising solar generation cuts natural gas demand

A chart shows the diverging output for gas and solar.EIA

Over the last three years, California generated steadily more electricity from utility-scale solar farms while generation from natural gas-fired plants dropped. Gas still dominates the state’s power generation, but industrial solar generation more than doubled in the first eight months of 2025 compared to the same period in 2020, new analysis from the federal Energy Information Administration found. Between January and August of this year, natural gas supplied 18% less power than during the same months five years ago. Gas-fired generation spiked in 2021 to compensate for droughts reducing hydroelectric output, and has fallen since. But the largest year-over-year drop occurred this year.

3. China connects another new reactor to the grid

You can count on one hand the number of new nuclear reactors built in the United States and Europe in recent memory. And while the Trump administration is taking major steps toward spurring new reactor projects in the U.S., the long-trumpeted nuclear renaissance has scarcely led to any new power plants with the promise of producing electrons anytime soon. That’s certainly not the case in China. Friday’s newsletter included China’s latest approval of two new reactors to begin construction. Today’s newsletter includes the update that China has officially patched yet another reactor onto the grid. China National Nuclear Corporation, one of the two major state-owned atomic power utilities in the country, announced that Unit 2 of its Zhangzhou nuclear plant is officially hooked up to the grid, World Nuclear News reported. It’s the second of six planned reactors, based on the Chinese-designed Hualong One model, at the same location in Fujian province.

It’s that capacity to build even the most complex of clean-energy infrastructure that has flattened out China’s emissions in recent years, as I wrote earlier this month. To go deeper on China’s grid, you should listen to the episode of Heatmap’s Shift Key podcast that includes UC San Diego export Michael Davidson.

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4. Republicans are split over carbon capture

The Environmental Protection Agency has granted certain states the power to permit so-called Class VI wells to store captured carbon dioxide. Now many of those Republican-led states want to use that authority to reject carbon wells, E&E News reported. In Texas, the colorful energy regulator Wayne Christian called his agency’s decision to permit a major carbon removal and storage project “a danger.” In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis called carbon storage a “scam” in a video posted on Facebook in March. In Louisiana, Governor Jeff Landry issued an executive order in October slapping a moratorium on new applications for Class VI permits until the state could “put into place a well-thought-out and methodical approach to application review and permitting.” And in Alabama, GOP state lawmaker Matthew Hammett prefiled a bill that would ban CO2 wells in the state’s southern county of Covington.

Arguably the biggest problem facing carbon capture technology is where to put that captured carbon and how to get it there. CO2 pipelines come with some risks, and mounting pushback. Until there’s somewhere for those pipelines to go, such as a well, it’s hard to justify the investment. No wells and no pipelines mean capturing carbon emissions before they enter the atmosphere will likely remain an unaffordable luxury.

5. Trump flipflops on granting clean air waivers to coking plants

The Trump administration has granted polluters waivers from Clean Air Act rules as part of its effort to revive heavy industry. But until recently, regulators appointed by President Donald Trump said such a pass wasn’t needed for the coking industry, which distills coal into fuel for a blast furnace. On Friday, Trump issued a proclamation granting a dozen coke manufacturing plants a two-year extension on fully meeting hazardous air pollutant rules, E&E News reported.

The move isn’t entirely unexpected. Trump has tried to revive coal-fired power generation, but keeps coming up against broken equipment that shuts down stations anyway, as Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin reported. But as Matthew wrote in July, global coal demand is rising, and the U.S. wants in on it.

THE KICKER

As recently as 2022, when Cameco bought its 49% share of Westinghouse, the Canadian uranium producer doubted the company had a future in reactors. Cameco was primarily interested in Westinghouse’s fuel fabrication and maintenance service businesses. “We just assumed there wouldn’t be anything new,” Grant Isaac, Cameco’s president and chief operating officer, told The Wall Street Journal. Now, the Trump administration putting up $80 billion to fund at least 10 new Westinghouse AP1000, each with the capacity to power 1 million American homes.