(Scroll down for resources in the series)

After decades of relatively flat demand, regulators are confronting rapid increases in electricity load. Data centers are at the forefront of this trend, while electrification of industry, buildings and transportation is also accelerating. Regulators and policymakers are sprinting to make sense of the problem, assess available solutions, and act to secure protections and safeguards that minimize harm without putting a chokehold on beneficial development.

RAP’s series Data Centers and the Next Era of Energy Regulation is designed to help decision-makers make sense of the mountain of information and navigate the landscape of large-load growth. Drawing on RAP’s history of working with regulators and other decision-makers across jurisdictions and market structures, this series explores the implications of large-load growth for energy regulation and how to appropriately balance urgent requests with long-term outcomes. Rather than focusing on a single technology or policy lever, this series will look across planning, cost allocation, reliability considerations and interconnection policies, among other topics, to identify key considerations and best practices for decision-makers. 

It’s critical to view this moment as an opportunity to catalyze long-needed structural reforms. We need to build a regulatory system for the 21st century to meet the needs of a changing energy sector, economy and population. This transformation can include using tools that regulators already have — such as planning, procurement and rate cases — more deliberately to protect customers, manage risk and capture any benefits of load growth. At the same time, it’s clear that existing tools are insufficient, and we need to develop new tools and frameworks to build a modern regulatory system.

This series focuses on data centers because they have emerged as the most visible and immediate challenge for regulators. Their size, speed of development and uncertain long-term demand have pushed questions of load growth out of regulatory planning proceedings and into public view. In many states, communities are debating where data centers should be built, how to power them, and who should bear the costs of the infrastructure that supports them. What was once a largely technical issue has become a subject of vibrant debate. The public expects data centers to be good neighbors in all senses of the term, and the regulatory system should support those outcomes. 

These questions are not limited to data centers. They will recur as electric vehicle adoption expands and industrial processes electrify. This period of change can also be an opportunity to fundamentally reconsider utility regulatory practices. Large new loads can support economic development, drive investment and, if approached thoughtfully, help accelerate the transition to a cleaner and more flexible grid. The challenge for regulators is not simply to manage growth, but to shape it so that system expansion supports reliability, affordability and the public interest.

Part 1

Building Resilient Foundations for Large Loads [full paper] — Louisa Eberle and Camille Kadoch

Building Resilient Foundations for Large Loads [two-page summary]

Transparency and planning are the foundations for informed and effective regulatory decision-making amid the uncertainty of rapid large-load growth. This paper identifies four primary steps in optimizing transparency and planning, with strategies for implementing each step:

1. Get collaborative. Decision-makers should ensure that any incentives such as tax breaks align with the public interest. Because data center impacts are wide-ranging, collaboration is also essential among different agencies and levels of government and among utilities. 
2. Gather information about what is coming. Collecting sufficient data to inform decisions is complicated by competitive interests in confidentiality. Decision-makers can use and expand existing tools, including data requests, investigations and studies, and reporting.
3. Scrutinize data center demand in planning. Analysts can use contingencies, scenarios and sensitivities to help navigate uncertainty. Also, modeling data center load flexibility can open up options for balancing quick connections with reliability and affordability.
4. Evaluate existing system and resource options. Robust planning is essential to understand the capabilities of the existing system and options to expand resources. Decision-makers should ensure that utilities consider a range of resources that can be deployed quickly and cheaply, including systemwide flexibility, systemwide energy efficiency, transmission innovations, and utility-scale renewables and storage. 

Related Resources

We’re Opening the AI “Bottle.” So, What Should Regulators Wish For? — Louisa Eberle, Camille Kadoch and Carl Linvill

Making Ratepayer Protection a Reality – Part 1: How Do Data Centers Impact Residential Rates? — Mark LeBel

Making Ratepayer Protection a Reality – Part 2: How States Can Help Turn the Data Center Boom into a Ratepayer Win — Michael T. Richard

Going Off Grid: The False Panacea of Islanding High-Impact Loads — Andrew Valainis

(This page was first published February 4, 2026, and will be updated.)