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This week is light on the funding, heavy on the deals.
On the solar siege, New York’s climate law, and radioactive data center
The public-private project aims to help realize the president’s goal of building 10 new reactors by 2030.
On nuclear tax credits, BLM controversy, and a fusion maverick’s fundraise
That doesn’t mean it plans to produce electricity anytime soon.
After a disappointing referendum in Maine, campaigners in New York are taking their arguments straight to lawmakers.
It’s an idea with bipartisan appeal, but AOC’s former policy adviser argues that the scale of the data center problem is too big for that.
Last night, between the trumpeting of fossil fuels and the lengthy honors awarded to both veterans and hockey players, President Trump devoted a portion of his State of the Union address to announcing a “ratepayer protection pledge,” under which big tech companies pay for their own power plants for data centers — a show of how central energy prices are becoming to today’s affordability debate.
Electricity in the United States is rapidly becoming expensive and unreliable. Vast swaths of the United States are at elevated risk of outages. January’s winter storms wiped out power for millions of Americans from Louisiana to Brooklyn. In 2025, utilities requested a record $31 billion in rate increases from captive customers. Gas and electricity prices are the two highest drivers of inflation.
The main driver of these new stressors on the grid: the expected $6.7 trillion to be deployed in data centers by 2030.
Policymakers at all levels of governments are coalescing on a strategy for dealing with rising data center demand that mirrors Trump’s ratepayer protection pledge: “bring your own generation,” or BYOG. Bipartisan bills introduced in Washington by Senators Chris Van Hollen, and Josh Hawley and Richard Blumenthal; and by Representatives Rob Menendez and Greg Casar, among others, would require hyperscalers like Meta, OpenAI, and Microsoft to pay for their own power plants and grid upgrades in order to plug in. Michigan, Oregon, Florida, Washington, Georgia, Illinois, and Delaware are all at various stages of enacting BYOG legislation for data centers.
BYOG would create something like a regulatory sandbox for data centers, insulating utilities and ratepayers from the risks of data center demand. But while efforts at consumer protection are important, these policies do not grapple with the scale of data center deployment.
A sandbox won’t withstand a tidal wave. Over the next five years, the equivalent of 17 to 32 New York Cities’ worth of electricity demand is expected to be added to the grid, more than half of which will come from data centers. This incredibly wide estimate means that generators risk overbuilding.
Amidst all this uncertainty, BYOG does not address who pays for new capacity in the event the AI bubble bursts and energy infrastructure is left stranded. Neither does BYOG address the drastically mismatched lifetimes of the chips powering AI (one to three years) and power plants (25 to 30 years). The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission expects 22 New York Cities’ worth of generation to be added to the grid by 2028. Who pays for all of this generation in a decade if even 5% of projected data center demand disappears?
AI is a promising technology, but that does not prevent it from being overvalued. Policymakers must consider the risks when data centers eventually disconnect from the grid, not just when they interconnect. This means ensuring that ratepayers and taxpayers are not left footing the bill for stranded energy infrastructure if data centers disconnect prematurely.
Rather than cordoning off data centers from the rest of the electricity market, policymakers should take a stronger hand in planning these deployments for social and economic benefit. Colocating datacenters with energy-intensive industries and requiring long-term commitments from hyperscalers are more efficient solutions that would also make new data centers more politically palatable.
Public sentiment has turned overwhelmingly against data center development. These vast facilities create relatively few jobs beyond their construction, but colocated with the manufacture of energy-intensive products like aluminum, steel, or fertilizer, suddenly they’re supporting employment. Colocation will also help diversify economic growth. Data center investment was responsible for a whopping 92% of GDP growth in the first half of 2025, creating a potentially dangerous dependency on continued expansion.
There are also simple legal guardrails that can provide a first line of defense against stranded costs. One is requiring long-term power purchase agreements between hyperscalers and generators. Thirteen bipartisan governors and the Trump administration recently urged the country’s largest grid operator, PJM Interconnection, to require 15-year generation contracts for hyperscalers. Notably, Van Hollen’s bill would only require states to “consider” the extension of “minimum utility contract lengths,” while the Hawley/Blumenthal and Menendez/Casar bills make no mention of contract length or stranded costs.
Hyperscalers can also curtail usage during peak demand, a policy that has seen bipartisan support in Texas. A now-famous study from Duke University last year found that if data centers were to curtail 1% of their usage during peak hours, they could avoid installing 126 gigawatts of new generation — that’s 21 New York Cities’ worth. Lawmakers have since taken to the idea. Several states are considering mandating so-called “demand response” programs, and Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Kathy Castor inserted a federal study on demand response into the appropriations bill Trump signed in January.
Regardless of how it’s done, ratepayers should not pay full freight for the tidal wave of infrastructure coming online, and most utility balance sheets should not be exposed to that risk. BYOG’s flaws have more to do with what it leaves out — namely that the planning of significant parts of our economy and electric system is left to tech companies, and little thought is given to the long-term ramifications of overbuilding. Rather than deal reactively with the nasty politics of a bailout, policymakers should make muscular interventions now to reduce risks for ratepayers and taxpayers.
Energy markets are not free markets. For the past century they have been heavily regulated at the state, regional, and federal level. Any discomfort with planning (or “statutory tools”) must be set aside if policymakers are going to efficiently manage the growth of data centers.
On Cybertruck deaths, Texas wind waste, and American aluminum
Current conditions: Yet more snow is dusting New York City with at least an inch fallen already, though that’s set to turn into rain later in the morning • Authorities in Saudi Arabia issued a red alert over a major sandstorm blasting broad swaths of the desert nation • Heavy snow blanketed Romania, halting transportation and taking down power lines.
President Trump speaks delivers the State of the Union address. Kenny Holston-Pool/Getty Images
In his State of the Union address Tuesday night, President Donald Trump unveiled what he called the new “ratepayer protection pledge.” Under the effort, the White House will tell “major tech companies that they have the obligation to provide for their own power needs.” By mandating the bring-your-own-generation approach, the Trump administration is endorsing a push that’s been ongoing for months. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation, the U.S. grid watchdog, called for data centers to build their own generators. An industry-backed proposal in the nation’s largest power grid would do something similar. “This is a unique strategy,” Trump said. “We have an old grid that could never handle the [amount] of electricity that’s needed.” With tech companies constructing new power plants, Trump said, towns should welcome data center projects that could end up lowering electricity rates by inviting more power onto the local grid.
The political blowback to data centers is gaining strength. It is, as my colleague Jael Holzman wrote recently, “swallowing American politics.” On the right, Senator Josh Hawley, the populist Republican from Missouri, introduced legislation this month to restrict data center construction. On the left, Senator Bernie Sanders, the democratic socialist from Vermont, reiterated his proposal this week to halt all data center projects. In the center, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat with unusually strong support among his state’s GOP voters, recently outlined plans for a more “selective” approach to data centers, as I reported in this newsletter.
Trump isn’t the only Republican pushing back against the data center blowback. On Tuesday, Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves delivered an impassioned defense of his state’s data center buildout. “I understand individuals who would rather not have any industrial project in their backyard. We all choose where to live, whether it’s urban, suburban, agrarian, or industrial. I do not understand the impulse to prevent our country from advancing technologically — except as civilizational suicide,” Reeves wrote in a post on X. “I don’t want to go gently. I love this country, and want her to rise. That’s why Mississippi has become the home of the world’s most impressive supercomputers. We are committed to America and American power. We know that being the hub of the world’s most awesome technology will inevitably bring prosperity and authority to our state. There is nobody better than Mississippians to wield it.”
Replying to Sanders’ proposal, Reeves said he’s “tempted to sit back and let other states fritter away the generational chance to build. To laugh at their short-sightedness. But the best path for all of us would be to see America dominate.”
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The subcompact Ford Pinto gained infamy in the 1970s for its tendency to explode when the gas tank ruptured in a crash. The Ford Motor Company sold just under 3.2 million Pintos. By the official death toll, 27 people died as a result of fires from the vehicles exploding. Tesla has sold more than 34,000 Cybertrucks; already, five people have died in fire fatalities.
That, according to a calculation by the automotive blog Fuel Arc, means the Tesla Cybertruck has 14.52 deaths per 100,000 units, compared to the Ford Pinto’s 0.85 deaths. “The Cybertruck is far more dangerous (by volume) than the historic poster child for corporate greed and grossly antagonistic design,” Fuel Arc’s Kay Leadfoot wrote. “I look forward to the Cybertruck being governmentally crash-tested by the NHTSA, which it has not been thus far. Until then, I can’t recommend sitting in one.” That is, however, based on the lower death toll figure for the Pinto. Back in 1977, Mother Jones published a blockbuster cover story under the headline “Pinto Madness” claiming that the number of deaths could be as high as 900.
Texas accused the recycling company Global Fiberglass Solutions of illegally dumping thousands of wind turbine blades near the central town of Sweetgrass. The company allegedly hired several subcontractors to break down, transport and recycle the blades, but failed to properly dispose of the waste and instead created what Windpower Monthly called a “stockpile” of more than 3,000 blades across two sites in the town. Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, seized on a Trumpian critique of the energy source, saying the dumps damage “beautiful Texas land and threaten surrounding communities.”
Off the Atlantic Coast, meanwhile, Orsted is at a transitional moment for two of its offshore wind projects. The Danish developer just brought the vessel Wind Scylla to port after completing the installation of turbines at its Revolution Wind project in New England. The boat is headed to New York next to start installing the first wind turbine at Sunrise Wind, according to OffshoreWIND.biz.
Last month, I told you that Century Aluminum inked a deal with Emirates Global Aluminum to build the first smelter in the U.S. in half a century in Oklahoma. On Tuesday, the U.S. Aluminum Company, a local firm in the state, joined the project, signing an agreement to “explore the development of an aluminum fabrication plant near the new smelter.” If completed, the project — already dubbed Oklahoma Primary Aluminum — would roughly double U.S. primary production of the metal.
The Biden administration had placed what Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin called “a big bet on aluminum” back in 2024. By spring of last year, our colleague Katie Brigham was chronicling the confusion over how Trump’s tariffs on aluminum would work. With the recent Supreme Court ruling upending Trump’s trade policies, that one may remain a headscratcher for a little while longer.
Another day, another landmark energy investment from Google. This time, the tech giant has made a deal with the long-duration energy storage startup Form Energy to deploy what Katie wrote “would be the largest battery in the world by energy capacity: an iron-air system capable of delivering 300 megawatts of power at once while storage 30 gigawatt-hours of energy, enabling continuous discharge for 100 hours straight.” The project will power a data center in Minnesota. “For all of 2025, I believe the installed capacity [added to the grid] in the entire U.S. was 57 gigawatt-hours. And in one project, we’re going to install 30 gigawatt-hours,” Form CEO Mateo Jaramillo told Katie. “What it highlights is, once you get to the 100-hour duration, you can really stop thinking about energy to some extent. “
