A Biden EPA Chief and a Trump FERC Chairman Share One Radical Idea: Let Washington Set the Rules Before the Grid Melts Down
(SeaPRwire) – By: Adrian Kingsley
Two former regulators who spent their careers on opposite sides of the political aisle have found rare agreement. One led the Environmental Protection Agency under President Biden. The other chaired the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission under President Trump. They disagree on nearly everything else. But on the data center crisis, their diagnosis is identical. The current patchwork of state and local improvisation is failing both communities and the industry.
America is building data centers faster than any regulatory framework can keep pace. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation issued its most severe Level 3 alert in May. Pennsylvania’s Public Utility Commission warned last month that the nation’s largest grid will miss reliability standards starting next year. Meanwhile, governors are responding with moratoriums and new permitting hurdles because Washington has offered nothing. This is not governance. It is triage.
The aviation parallel the authors invoke carries more weight than its breezy delivery suggests. When the airplane outpaced regulation in the 1920s, Calvin Coolidge convened a board. Congress responded with the Air Commerce Act of 1926. The result was not the death of aviation. Commercial flight grew inside a federal framework. Four major airlines existed by the late 1930s. Over a million passengers flew annually. Safety, noise and emissions standards followed as the industry matured. Communities lived beneath flight paths and gained protections. The United States did not choose between competitiveness and public interest. It built both simultaneously through structured governance.
Data centers sit at their own bonfire stage today. The difference is time pressure. Aviation took decades to establish its framework. The authors argue we do not have decades. Artificial intelligence has become a matter of national security. A quarter of American adults now use everyday AI tools daily. The infrastructure behind those tools requires computing capacity that matches or beats adversarial nations. Simply blocking development is not an option. Neither is building without constraints.
The state-level responses currently emerging reveal both the problem and a possible path forward. Virginia is moving toward requiring local approval for any data center exceeding 25 megawatts. It is also banning nondisclosure agreements that have historically kept communities in the dark. Governor Glenda Spanberger, a Democrat, is extending policies first introduced by her Republican predecessor Glenn Youngkin. The pattern here is notable. The “blanket no” approach and the “forge ahead unbridled” stance are both short-term political reactions. The emerging model asks developers to negotiate community benefit agreements covering water infrastructure, grid reliability, pollution control, noise reduction and local hiring. This is the beginning of a framework, not its conclusion.
The friction between federal competitiveness goals and local community impacts will define the next decade of infrastructure policy. Data centers differ in cooling technology, load profiles, water demand and physical footprint. Community needs vary across the country. A single federal mandate cannot account for all of this. But the current vacuum forces every county and municipality to improvise its own rules. That produces uncertainty for developers and confusion for residents. The aviation precedent suggests a middle path exists. Federal standards that set minimum thresholds for grid impact, emissions and community contribution. State and local flexibility to layer on additional requirements specific to their circumstances. Developer certainty that comes from knowing the rules before breaking ground.
The authors are right about one thing. Data centers will be built. The question is whether they will be built inside a framework that serves both national competitiveness and local communities or whether the current chaos will force a more disruptive reckoning later. The window for deliberate action is narrowing. Grid alerts do not wait for congressional deliberation.
Author bio: Adrian Kingsley, internationally renowned scholar who has long studied public administration and social policy, with decades of experience analyzing the intersection of technology infrastructure and governance frameworks.