Three different governments moved on data-center permitting this week, in three different directions. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin proposed letting gas plants, data centers, and factories begin construction before air permits are issued. Colleton County, South Carolina passed first reading on a six-month moratorium covering an 800-acre data-center proposal. And Colorado lawmakers killed both of their state's major data-center regulatory bills, leaving rules to the Public Utilities Commission. Yesterday's Maryland-PJM-PPL throughline got the financing side; today is about who writes the rules.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Monday proposed changes to the Clean Air Act's “begin actual construction” rule that would let gas power plants, data centers, and factories pour foundations, run piping and wiring, lay cement pads, and bring in electrical, water, wastewater, and telecom services before securing the air-emission permit a final facility requires. The agency framed the proposal as a way to “remove unnecessary impediments” to American infrastructure. The change enters a 45-day public-comment period. The proposal mirrors guidance the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality quietly issued in January under outgoing Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R), which already allows data-center buildings to be constructed before air permits cover the on-site backup generators that nearly all Virginia data centers depend on.
David Baron, a senior attorney at Earthjustice, on what the change does to local agencies: "Once you have the layout of the plant … there's going to be a lot of sunk costs there. The political pressure that would be brought to bear on a local agency or state agency that's charged with making those [permit] decisions would be very, very high." Keri Powell, who runs the Southern Environmental Law Center's community-health and air program: under the new rules a gas plant could be nearly complete except for the technology central to the air-permitting process. Big Tech demand is the driving context — Virginia's largest utility, Dominion Energy, said in 2024 its data-center customers needed 3.5 gigawatts of power; data-center developer requests in Dominion's queue now exceed 70 gigawatts.
Source: Charles Paullin / InsideClimate News.
In Walterboro, South Carolina, the Colleton County Council voted unanimously on May 4 to approve first reading of a six-month moratorium on data-center approvals, with a path to extend the pause if needed. The vote followed citizen opposition and a pending lawsuit by two landowners against a proposed 800-plus-acre data center in a rural portion of the Lowcountry county. Under South Carolina ordinance procedure, the measure now requires two further readings at two separate meetings. Robby Maynor, policy advocate at the Southern Environmental Law Center: “We were encouraged to see Colleton County Council take the first step in adopting this six-month moratorium on data center development while they update the county's Comprehensive Plan." The moratorium specifically gives the county council, staff, and Planning Commission time to write data-center rules into the land-use code.
In Denver, the same week, the Colorado Senate Transportation and Energy Committee killed SB 26-102 — Sen. Cathy Kipp's (D-Fort Collins) bill that would have required new large data centers to secure 100 percent annual renewable energy matching by 2031, cover their full infrastructure costs through long-term contracts, and conduct community-impact analyses. The House Energy and Environment Committee killed the companion HB 26-1030 four days earlier. Regulation now defaults back to the Colorado Public Utilities Commission. Megan Kemp, Earthjustice's Rocky Mountain legislative representative: “It's disappointing that after months of conversations on how to prioritize the needs of Colorado's communities and our environment, that this bill will not move forward." The Conservation Colorado poll the bills' backers cited: 91 percent of 800 likely 2026 voters surveyed in April supported “common-sense rules to protect ratepayers, communities, and our natural resources like air and water from unrestricted data center growth.” Xcel Energy has projected that large-load customers, largely data centers, could push the utility's peak power demand up more than 40 percent by 2035.
The same week, town residents in Cassville, Wisconsin — a Driftless-region town on the upper Mississippi where an anonymous developer had proposed a billion-dollar, 400-to-500-megawatt data center — voted 44-0 inside the town garage to adopt a two-year ordinance prohibiting data centers and barring land-use changes without town-board approval.
Sources: Michael M. DeWitt, Jr. / Bluffton Today, USA Today Network; Scott Weiser / The Gazette (Colorado Springs); Bennet Goldstein / Wisconsin Watch, distributed by Green Bay Press-Gazette and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Yesterday's brief carried PPL Electric's news that its Pennsylvania data-center pipeline grew to 28.3 gigawatts. Today's earnings-call detail is what is happening across the river. PPL's Louisville Gas and Electric and Kentucky Utilities subsidiaries grew their Kentucky data-center pipeline from 8 gigawatts to 11.9 gigawatts in the same first quarter, and PPL president and CEO Vincent Sorgi told analysts the utility is starting “early stage evaluation and site readiness work” with X-energy on a phased small modular nuclear reactor program to serve that load. LG&E and KU may also ask Kentucky regulators later this year for permission to add battery storage, a 266-megawatt pumped-storage project from Rye Development, or gas-fired generation, with the mix depending on how much load actually arrives. PPL also plans to ask state and federal regulators by July for permission to merge LG&E and KU into a single utility.
Sixty miles east of LG&E's E.W. Brown Generating Station in Mercer County, residents are already organizing against a data center being marketed on private land adjacent to the coal plant. Cody Stinnett, 32, joined the group We Are Mercer County and is now running as a write-in candidate for county magistrate. Three Democratic primary candidates — Erin Petrey for Kentucky's 6th Congressional District, U.S. Senate candidates Charles Booker and Logan Forsythe — have called for a statewide moratorium. Diane Floyd, We Are Mercer County organizer and biology professor at Hazard Community and Technical College: “I don't think that there's a single person in our local government that has ever even come close to making a deal of that size and the impacts on us as individual citizens." Rep. Josh Bray's bill to require utilities to ensure other ratepayers don't bear data-center infrastructure costs died on the final legislative day in Frankfort.
Sources: Ethan Howland / Utility Dive; Liam Niemeyer / Kentucky Lantern (States Newsroom).
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