On Friday, President Donald Trump—together with governors across key Mid-Atlantic Region states—announced a new initiative aimed at addressing soaring electricity demand driven by large‑scale AI and cloud‑computing data centers. This joint federal-state initiative directs the regional wholesale power grid operator, PJM Interconnection, L.L.C. (PJM)1, to conduct an emergency auction to…
On December 18, 2025, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a pivotal order to PJM Interconnection, the nation’s largest regional wholesale power grid operator running the transmission system in the Mid-Atlantic region. The Order intends to help reshape how large loads—especially data centers—connect to the grid in the face…
On September 8, 2025, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) issued a Request for Applications (RFA) seeking proposals from U.S. companies to develop AI data centers co-located with advanced energy projects at the Idaho National Laboratory. This RFA follows the Administration’s July Executive Order on accelerating AI data center infrastructure…
Data centers … in space. How did the “final frontier” become a genuine consideration for siting and constructing next-generation data centers? Perhaps it is the inevitable result of demand greatly outstripping supply in two of the great pillars of the data center ecosystem: real estate and power supply. As Pillsbury…
Pillsbury’s experience with data centers dates to the dot-com era. Since then, we’ve counseled the industry as proprietary centers were supplemented, and in some cases supplanted, by physical and cloud-based systems of larger dedicated enterprises. The data center landscape is now international in scope and diverse in speciation, with edge,…
It seems like such a simple question. Who owns data centers? Ownership structures in the digital economy are more varied than might appear on the surface. While the largest computing and cloud service providers, such as Apple, Amazon (AWS), Microsoft (Azure) and Google (Cloud)—also known as “hyperscalers”—do own and operate…
The rapid growth of electricity demand from data centers has emerged as a major challenge for the U.S. power sector. Much of this demand is being driven by the deployment of large learning models (LLMs) and generative artificial intelligence (AI). These workloads require large-volume, high-uptime computational infrastructure, and correspondingly large,…
Data centers use various chemicals that have recently been the focus of regulatory efforts at the federal and state level. The historic or future use of these chemicals may create liabilities, obligations, or new costs for both existing and planned data centers. PFAS Use in Data Centers Per- and polyfluoroalkyl…
The ever-increasing demand for digital infrastructure, coupled with continuing cryptocurrency demand volatility, has generated significant interest in transforming building improvements housing crypto mining farms into modern high-capacity data centers. Crypto mines and data centers share certain foundational elements—facilities with a large footprint and the need for high power capacity and…
On April 7, the Office of Policy for U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) published a Request for Information (RFI) seeking input from industry professionals, grid operators, local communities, Tribal governments, and other stakeholders regarding the development and operation of AI infrastructure—including data centers—on DOE-owned or managed lands. This initiative aligns…