On July 28, 2026, we hosted a webinar on data center growth and how it is reshaping power markets. The webinar was timely. In the past few months, data center regulation morphed from an energy regulatory issue into a key midterm election issue. Important developments over the past month or so include:
On August 3, Governor Abbott directed ERCOT and the Texas Utility Commission to effectively halt all data center development pending the completion of a comprehensive audit. Issues addressed in the audit include whether the data center is providing its own power or depending on the grid for power. ERCOT’s current estimated completion date for the audit is mid-December.
On August 18, Pennsylvania Governor Shapiro issued an executive order requiring data centers to pay the full cost of generation, transmission, distribution and related infrastructure required by their projects “without shifting such costs to Pennsylvania households and businesses.”
On August 29, Republican Mike Rogers, in a battle for the open Michigan Senate seat, stated his support for a one-year moratorium on data centers in Michigan.
The Wall Street Journal reported on September 2 that Steve Bannon backs a proposal from Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to ban construction of new data centers
According to a recent Fox News poll, 76% of Democrats and 60% of Republicans now oppose data center construction. Figure 1 shows the step increase in local opposition over the past calendar quarters.
Figure 1: Number of U.S. data center projects facing new opposition, by quarter, Data Center Watch (10a Labs)
In an August 28 article, the Wall Street Journal noted a new battlefront over jobs created by data centers. Building trade unions are becoming increasingly active in the debate, arguing that data center delays “endanger thousands of building-related jobs.”
On August 31, President Trump strongly supported data-center development, stating in a Truth Social post that “The only reason communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor.” The President also noted that the winner in the anti-data-center movement was China.
As noted in the Market Impact segment of our webinar, we continue to see a significant split in the forward market prices in ERCOT and PJM.
The forward electricity market continues to sell off over the past 30 days, with CY 2028 through 2030 seeing the largest declines of over 10%. This reflects the market’s belief that over the next few years, the combination of behind-the-meter-generation and significant new generation (primarily solar and batteries) more than offsets expected load growth risk.
The forward electricity market continues to remain elevated over the past 30 days. On August 19, PJM increased its load forecast for 2029/2030 by almost 6 GWs, driven largely by increased data center load. While PJM projects a significant increase in new generation, forward prices indicate that demand will continue to stress supply over the next few years.