A Saturday Seminar published by The Regulatory Review summarizes recent scholarship proposing frameworks to govern data centers' demands on electricity grids, water supplies, and local communities. The U.S. Department of Energy estimated data centers made up approximately 4.4 percent of U.S. electricity usage in 2023 and projects that share could reach between 6.7 percent and 12 percent by 2028. In June 2026, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission directed all six regional grid operators within its jurisdiction to justify or reform their rules for connecting large electricity users, while a July 2025 executive order, EO 14318, directed federal agencies to accelerate permitting for data centers. Scholars cited in the piece, drawn from institutions including the University of Michigan, UC Law San Francisco, MIT, and Harvard Law School, advocate for curtailment-based grid access, mandatory water use disclosure, limits on local preemption legislation, and scrutiny of secret utility contracts that may shift data center costs onto ordinary ratepayers.
FERC's June 2026 directive to all six regional grid operators to reform large-load interconnection rules represents a broad regulatory intervention that will directly affect how and when data centers can connect to the grid across most of the United States. Separately, the Harvard Law School analysis warning that secret utility contracts shift data center energy costs onto ordinary consumers could accelerate state-level regulatory scrutiny of utility rate structures, with consequences for how future data center power agreements are structured and disclosed.
The Regulatory Review is a credible policy publication, and a dedicated analysis of how regulators are approaching the AI data center boom is timely and distinct from already-published state-level legislation stories.