Large Loads
Allison Clements is a partner with digital infrastructure advisory firm ASG and Principal of 804 Advisory, where she focuses on the intersection of market design, policy and technological innovation. She advises clients in the data center development and energy sectors on the opportunities across the two industries. Allison served as a Commissioner on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission from 2020 to 2024.
The rapid rise of power demand emerging from cloud and artificial intelligence, revived manufacturing, and successful electrification is causing quite a stir in what has been a relatively predictable growth environment over the last several decades. As the tech and power industries, Wall Street, and governors’ offices try to rush new data centers and other large loads to market, regulators seeking workable approaches to facilitating this new demand reliably and affordably are justified in their urgency.
Perhaps the good news is that many of the barriers to rapid grid interconnection are created not by technology insufficiency but by policy or a lack thereof. As is often the case in the complicated web that is U.S. electricity regulation, there is no singular fix to the policy challenges at hand and of course not all policy reform is within easy reach (tax and tariff uncertainty come to mind, at least). Even in the face of ambiguity, however, there are near-term policy opportunities that can lessen cost and burden while increasing interconnection speed.
And near-term is a critical focus. In the medium and longer term the solution set will broaden. Supply chain woes will sort themselves out. Federal energy and tax policy, which may be viewed as working at cross purposes with regard to load growth, will continue to play out.