The rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing has dramatically increased global data center energy consumption, challenging existing low-carbon infrastructure development. This study addresses a crucial gap by comparing the Levelized Cost of Electricity for wind, solar, solar plus battery storage, nuclear, and natural gas technologies tailored explicitly for meeting Meta’s data center energy demands through 2030. Our custom model incorporates detailed capital and operational costs, capacity factors, site-specific data, and sensitivity analyses of key variables.

In the United States, the current system for interconnecting large electric loads, like data centers, to the grid has left all sides frustrated. Data center developers are mired in slow interconnection processes. Meanwhile, electricity customers face rising rates and threats to grid reliability as the nation’s grid operators struggle to interconnect new power plants and batteries to the system quickly enough to meet rising demand. This brief outlines policy considerations for FERC to evaluate and highlights processes and mechanisms that grid operators would need to develop in order to maximize the benefits of load flexibility for electricity consumers. FERC has docketed the DOE Advanced Notice Of Proposed Rulemaking (RM26-4) and requested an initial round of comments by November 14, 2025, and reply comments by November 28, 2025. UPDATE: FERC has extended the initial comment period to November 21, 2025, with reply comments due by December 5, 2025.

Hyperscalers are large-scale cloud computing providers that operate massive data centers to support global digital services. The rapid expansion of hyperscale data centers is driven by increasing demand for cloud computing, artificial intelligence, big data analytics, and digital transformation across industry and government. These data centers can provide services such as computing and storage at enterprise scale but consume large amounts of energy and water to do so, posing sustainability challenges.

North Carolina Senate Bill 266 (SB266) removes interim carbon emissions targets from the NC Carbon Plan. This memorandum evaluates an analysis of removing these targets conducted by Joseph DeCarolis, Anderson de Queiroz, and Jeremiah Johnson at North Carolina State University (summary of analysis; full analysis), including how alternative assumptions might affect its overall conclusions.

Increased need for electricity is driving elevated demand for power companies to rapidly build out their generation capacity. But Nicholas Institute research shows that, with strategic timing of load use, such demand could be met by the existing power grid.

A key solution to the United States' soaring electrical demand—driven by unprecedented electricity needs from large commercial customers, particularly data centers and their booming artificial intelligence workloads—is load flexibility. This analysis provides a first-order estimate of the potential for accommodating such loads with minimal capacity expansion or impact on demand-supply balance.

In late July 2023, the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) released its much-anticipated rule on interconnection reform, Order 2023. This policy brief explores a deeper reform option known as connect and manage. This less restrictive interconnection approach could speed the deployment of resources in a way that can be managed after their integration with the grid, leading to a larger volume of interconnected generation capacity without sacrificing reliability.

After decades of failed proposals, the Western United States stands on the precipice of a regionalized electricity market. Current momentum exists in large part because of the success of extant real-time energy imbalance markets, stood up first by the California Independent System Operator in the mid-2010s and more recently by the Southwest Power Pool.

Using a simulation tool, the authors investigate the effects created by a US state defecting from the wholesale electricity market in an organized electric grid on the states that remain in the coalition. The report finds that if a net-importing state defects, the remaining states’ producers are worse off and the remaining states’ consumers are better off. The opposite effect takes hold if the defecting state is a net-exporter. Furthermore, the authors find evidence that defection impacts the remaining states’ climate initiatives.

As states advance their climate policies with ambitious clean energy targets, wholesale market operators are grappling with questions about if and how electricity markets should evolve as a response. Several ISO/RTOs are looking to change their market rules to include carbon pricing, but there is a diversity in approaches.