A day after Maryland's governor told PJM at its own annual meeting that the grid operator is failing ratepayers, the new chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission went a step further and asked out loud whether PJM has grown too big to govern. NEMA published an updated outlook that puts data centers at 38% of U.S. electricity consumption through 2037. And in Hubbard, Ohio and Hill County, Texas, two local data-center moments — one a disclosure, one a moratorium — landed on the same morning.
The new chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Laura Swett, used a speech this week to push past Maryland Gov. Wes Moore's Monday gripes about PJM and ask a different question. Swett said the 13-state grid operator's stakeholder process is “slow where it must be fast, opaque where it must be transparent and vulnerable to vetoes and agenda control exactly when the region needs immediate action.” Then she said the part nobody at FERC had said out loud before: "If this can't be landed given PJM's huge and diverse footprint, perhaps it simply has grown too big to function." FERC will hold a July 23 technical conference to, in Swett's words, “build a record eyed toward actionable change."
Kent Chandler, a senior fellow at the R Street Institute who used to sit on the Kentucky Public Service Commission, said FERC will need to be careful that the conference doesn't get captured by the very interests it's supposed to police: "States and consumer advocates have been asking FERC to overhaul PJM's governance for years, and have been rebuffed at every turn."
PJM said through spokesman Jeffrey Shields that the grid operator “appreciates” Swett's interest and will participate. The PJM Power Providers Group, which represents independent power producers, said the process is “not fundamentally broken."
Source: Utility Dive.
The National Electrical Manufacturers Association published a new 2050 outlook this week that puts U.S. net electricity consumption at 6,130 terawatt-hours in 2050, up from 3,936 in 2024 — a 55% jump. Inside that headline number sits a sharper one: data centers will account for 38% of U.S. net electricity consumption through 2037, with a 300% increase in data-center demand over the next decade. NEMA President Debra Phillips: "A year ago, we sounded the alarm on the scale of what was coming. Today's update makes clear that the trajectory has only steepened."
The buy-side number on the same morning's Utility Dive run sits in the same ballpark. The Corporate Energy Buyers Association says U.S. corporations contracted a record 27 gigawatts of clean energy in 2025 and another 17 gigawatts in just the first quarter of 2026 — on pace, per a CEBA estimate sourced to S&P Global, for “by far, the largest year ever in corporate clean energy buying.” CEBA CEO Rich Powell said about 75% of the 27 gigawatts came from four companies — Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta — each contracting four to six gigawatts a year. "They've all decided the build out of [AI] is existential to their business models."
Translation for the rest of us: 27 gigawatts is about the steady-state generating capacity of Florida. Four corporations contracted that much new clean power in a single year.
Source: Utility Dive, reporting on the NEMA 2050 outlook and CEBA's 2025 procurement totals.
In Trumbull County, Ohio, Hubbard Mayor Ben Kyle put out a news release Wednesday confirming what residents had been hearing rumors about for over a year. The city signed a nondisclosure agreement in December 2024 to participate in something called Project Milo — an information-technology project the city's regional economic development partner, Lake to River, is shopping to a company evaluating five other Ohio communities. No formal application has been filed. Hubbard's zoning code requires any data center to sit on industrial-zoned land. The city council meets Monday and Kyle has invited residents to come ask questions.
Kyle was careful: "I am not for or against Project Milo at this time. What I do support is a fair, legal and impartial process. Hubbard City Council will have the final vote on any rezoning and that will not change."
A thousand miles southwest, Hill County, Texas — 55 miles south of Fort Worth — voted 3-2 on Tuesday for a one-year pause on new data centers in unincorporated areas. The trigger was a 300-acre development proposed by Dallas-based Provident Data Centers in north Hillsboro. Hill County Commissioner Jim Holcomb, who voted for the moratorium: "The data center folks have found a sweet spot in the state that has limited regulations, limited enforcement, limited code, and they're coming faster than we can keep up with." The Associated Press reported that this is the first Texas county to pass such a moratorium.
County Judge Shane Brassell said he knew of at least eight data-center projects in the works in Hill County — “he hears through word of mouth about farmers who have sold their land to data center developers” — though Texas developers aren't required to disclose their plans to the county.
Source: Brandon Cantwell / Tribune Chronicle and Vindicator on Hubbard; Associated Press in Morning Journal and Inter-Mountain on Hill County.
The family of Tiru Chabba — a 45-year-old South Carolina resident killed in the April 2025 mass shooting at Florida State University — filed a lawsuit Monday in Tallahassee federal court alleging OpenAI was negligent in creating ChatGPT and that the chatbot served as “co-conspirator” with the alleged shooter. The complaint says Phoenix Ikner exchanged 13,000 messages with ChatGPT starting in March 2024 and ending minutes before the shooting, which killed five people.
Bakari Sellers, one of the attorneys representing Chabba's estate, at a press conference outside the courthouse: "We are not going to allow the American public to have clinical trials run on them by OpenAI and ChatGPT. This issue is not about politics at all. In fact, it's about the duty owed to the American public — making sure that other individuals like Ikner do not get their hands on weapons and are able to carry out mass murder with their co-conspirator, ChatGPT."
OpenAI says it proactively shared information about Ikner's account with law enforcement after learning of the incident. The company is forecasting a $1 trillion valuation in advance of its planned initial public offering later this year. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has separately been investigating whether ChatGPT is criminally liable. Ikner's death-penalty trial is scheduled for October.
Source: South Carolina Daily Gazette, originally produced by Florida Phoenix.
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