Good morning. A federal data-center oversight law is about to lapse with nothing behind it, Maryland is forcing large loads to pay their own way, and clean-energy financing is stuck waiting on Treasury guidance. The power math is still moving faster than the rulebook.
Top Stories
DATA-CENTER OVERSIGHT GOES DARK
Wired
The Federal Data Center Enhancement Act sunsets September 30 with no successor in place, leaving the government's own data-center reliability and security rules to lapse as agencies lean harder on AI compute.
MARYLAND MAKES DATA CENTERS PAY UP
The Daily Record
Maryland's new energy law requires large-load customers to register with regulators and cover grid upgrade costs instead of shifting them onto households.
RENEWABLE DEALS HIT A RULES WALL
Bloomberg Tax
Insurers and banks are slowing clean-energy tax-credit deals while they wait for Trump administration guidance, freezing capital at the worst possible time for developers.
DOE ORDERS BACKUP POWER INTO PJM
Department of Energy
A new 202(c) emergency order lets major facilities, including data centers, run backup generation as PJM heads into summer reliability risk.
DATA-CENTER REVOLT SPREADS
Tom's Hardware
Local opposition has reportedly blocked or delayed more than $130 billion in data-center projects, turning power and water politics into a national permitting problem.
Power & Grid
CLEAN ENERGY BREAKS SPRING RECORDS
Canary Media
SunZia and other new wind and solar resources pushed U.S. clean-energy output to spring records, a counterweight to the AI power panic.
MAINE WIND BUILDOUT RUNS INTO TRANSMISSION POLITICS
The Maine Monitor
New wind farms and transmission lines are moving toward northern Maine, keeping the old clean-power fight focused on who hosts the infrastructure.
KANSAS NUCLEAR STARTUP TURNS TO STOCK SALE
Kansas Reflector
A company pitching a new Kansas nuclear facility is planning a stock offering, another sign that the nuclear buildout is moving from talking point to capital hunt.
SILICON VALLEY FUNDS A NUCLEAR RENAISSANCE
Newsweek
Tech investors are leaning into nuclear as AI electricity demand turns firm, carbon-free power into a strategic bottleneck.
OFFSHORE WIND FIGHT HEADS TO APPEAL
Heatmap
The Trump administration's offshore-wind position is moving through the courts, adding another legal overhang to a sector already fighting economics and permitting delays.
Data Centers
AI LABOR FIGHT MOVES INTO 2028 POLITICS
Axios
Unions are starting to frame AI as a 2028 campaign issue, a useful demand-side signal for why the compute buildout keeps getting harder to slow.
AMAZON LOCKS IN CORNING FIBER PIPELINE
TechRadar
A multibillion-dollar AWS and Corning deal shows the AI buildout is now a supply-chain race for fiber, not just chips and power.
KENTUCKY UTILITIES DEFEND DATA-CENTER RULES
Kentucky Lantern
Utilities say existing tariff rules can protect ratepayers from big data centers, while critics argue regulators need stronger guardrails before load arrives.
VERMONT YANKEE SITE GETS NEW ENERGY LEASE
Vermont Public
A retired nuclear property is getting another look for energy development, a small but telling example of how old power sites are being recycled for new demand.
TENNESSEE DATA-CENTER PLANS GO ON ICE
Tennessee Lookout
Local Tennessee governments are pausing data-center proposals after resident pushback, giving officials time to write rules for power, water and land-use impacts.
Stat of the Day
45 GW
Data-center nuclear deals now in the pipeline
Conditional offtake agreements between data centers and small modular reactors nearly doubled in a year, up from 25 GW at the end of 2024.
IEA ↗