What to watch
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Sen. Katie Muth
Memo:
In the near future, I will introduce legislation that would prohibit data centers from obtaining a Certificate of Public Convenience (CPC) and thus becoming a public utility in Pennsylvania. This legislation would update the definition of public utility in Title 66 (Public Utilities) to specifically indicate that the term does not include a data center.
Over the past several months, residents and local governments have been fighting back against massive, energy-intensive, hyperscale data center proposals in their communities. And recently, many of those same communities have earned victories when their local elected leaders voted down applications. Proponents of putting big business over everything else have become frustrated with the grassroots movement against data centers and have now turned their sights on a way to make it easier to site and develop data centers – by granting data centers public utility status. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, stated in a recent interview that “We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter.” Recent statements such as these by tech industry giants have perpetuated the misleading narrative that AI data centers are a public utility.
Current law does indicate that the term public utility does not include “any person or corporation, not otherwise a public utility, who or which furnishes service only to himself or itself.” However, because of billionaire tech bros invading our Commonwealth with hyperscale AI data center proposals that include onsite methane gas power plants, enabled by our government fast-tracking permit approvals, the law must be more specific to ensure data centers are prohibited from obtaining the legal rights of a public utility. If data centers were deemed a public utility, local government authority regarding the zoning and siting of data centers and onsite power generation would be eliminated. Public utilities are granted the authority of eminent domain – the government's power to take private property for a project that benefits the public. This would enable data center developers to acquire development rights, rights-of-way and property for building, maintaining, or expanding infrastructure for data center projects that only benefit private, for-profit corporations.
I urge you to support this legislation to protect Pennsylvanians by ensuring that data centers are prohibited from obtaining public utility status.
What Is PATER and Why Should Communities Be Concerned?
What It Is
The Pennsylvania Accelerated Transmission and Energy Redevelopment (PATER) Study is a two-part resource adequacy study designed to identify opportunities to upgrade transmission infrastructure at 20 different under-utilized points of interconnection to support data center growth in Pennsylvania. Funded by a $2 million DOE grant awarded to the PA PUC, the study uses PJM's State Agreement Approach to identify priority sites for transmission upgrades that can attract private investment, draw new energy development, and create jobs in local communities.
The first phase is expected to be completed by mid-2026. The second phase — a deeper assessment of prioritized power generation facilities — is anticipated to be completed by the end of 2026.
Who Is Driving It
This is not a neutral grid reliability study. The PATER Study is a joint effort of the Public Utility Commission, Gov. Josh Shapiro's office, state agencies, and the nonprofit Team Pennsylvania — an organization that promotes economic development in the state and does not disclose its donors. Team Pennsylvania's role as lead managing partner raises significant transparency questions. Critics argue that Team PA gives its donors an inside track to accessing the Shapiro administration without any transparency or accountability. The nonprofit's list of investors includes Deloitte, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers District 3, Penn State Health, and Shell. According to its most recent tax filing, the organization also reported conflict of interest transactions.
In other words: a nonprofit with undisclosed corporate donors is managing a publicly funded study explicitly designed to accelerate the infrastructure that those same corporate interests want built.
Why It's Bad for Communities
1. It was designed to serve data centers, not ratepayers.
The DOE announcement is unusually candid about this: the study explicitly aims to "support data center growth in Pennsylvania" and is described as a potential "model for other states seeking to identify corridors for transmission infrastructure upgrades." The beneficiaries of this infrastructure are large corporate tenants. The costs, however, get distributed to everyone on the grid.
2. It accelerates development before communities have protections in place.
Community opposition to data center development is palpable throughout Pennsylvania, with communities stopping projects at the municipal level before development begins, citing concerns with electricity costs, water and energy use, land use changes, community impact, and job loss. PATER moves in the opposite direction — identifying and greasing the path for infrastructure buildout while legislative guardrails are still being debated.
3. The energy cost burden falls on residents, not developers.
Critics often cite the intense buildout in Northern Virginia as an illustration of the effects on communities, from constant low-frequency noise to spiking electric bills and major water usage. Data center developers warned the Virginia utility Dominion Energy that upcoming projects would need 40 gigawatts of electricity — the energy equivalent of increasing Virginia's households nearly fourfold — prompting plans to build more natural gas power plants, which could raise utility bills for households and businesses while increasing carbon emissions. Pennsylvania is now building the infrastructure to replicate that outcome.
4. It targets retired power plant sites without community input.
The study will evaluate recently retired power generation sites, determining where energy projects can be developed more efficiently and how transmission infrastructure can be upgraded or replaced. Many of these sites are in or near residential communities that fought for their closure. Redeveloping them for data center-adjacent energy infrastructure reintroduces industrial burden to communities that already bore disproportionate environmental load.
5. Fossil fuel dependence is baked in.
PATER has been criticized by environmental group PennFuture for putting too much emphasis on fossil fuels. Rapid transmission expansion to meet data center demand is functionally an incentive to bring gas generation back online.
6. The governance structure bypasses democratic accountability.
"This is a public trust and transparency issue," said Jennifer Dusart, a small business owner and resident near the state capital. "Too many Americans are finding out about these projects after decisions have been made. We have been bulldozed over, and when citizens have raised concerns, they are often dismissed as uninformed, emotional or anti-progress." A study managed by a nontransparent nonprofit, funded federally, and designed to produce a corporate development roadmap is structurally resistant to public accountability.
What Is HB 502?
Pennsylvania House Bill 502 establishes the Reliable Energy Siting and Electric Transition (RESET) Board — a new state-appointed body that takes land-use approval authority away from local municipalities for large-scale energy generation projects. On paper, it's an energy infrastructure streamlining bill. In practice, it creates a direct bypass mechanism for data center developers.
How It Works
If a data center is built with its own on-site energy generation facility of 25 MW or more, the developer can apply to the RESET Board for a Certificate of Reliable Energy Supply (CRES). That certificate makes the RESET Board — not the local township, borough, or municipality — the sole approval authority for that project. Local zoning and land-use restrictions are superseded entirely for the energy-generation portion of the development.
Combined with Governor Shapiro's GRID standards, which push data centers to generate their own power rather than draw from the grid, HB 502 doesn't just enable this pathway — it becomes the mandatory route. If GRID standards are adopted, virtually every new data center would need on-site generation, which means virtually every new data center would be eligible to bypass local approval through the RESET Board.
Why It's Bad for Communities
1. It strips local governments of their primary tool for protecting residents.
The most direct harm is jurisdictional. The Pennsylvania Municipal League — the statewide association representing borough and township governments — has explicitly flagged HB 502 as a preemption threat. The RESET Board becomes the sole approving entity, superseding local zoning and land-use restrictions for the energy-generation portion of a data center project. For communities like those along the Schuylkill corridor, this means a local planning commission that has spent years crafting protective ordinances can be completely sidelined.
2. It has a built-in anti-community "look-back" provision.
HB 502 includes a clause restricting the RESET Board from issuing a CRES in areas rezoned to residential since January 1, 2024. The intent is to prevent communities from rezoning land to residential as a defensive measure against data center encroachment. Any municipality that tried to proactively protect itself after that date could have that rezoning invalidated if challenged. Communities that organized and acted quickly are specifically penalized.
3. It fast-tracks fossil fuel generation, not just clean energy.
Despite being framed as a clean energy siting bill, HB 502 is not limited to renewable generation. Twenty-five environmental organizations condemned it for fast-tracking gas projects. If passed, HB 502 would endanger over 530,000 Pennsylvania residents in at least 35 communities that environmental groups have helped protect through existing fossil fuel ordinances. The bill removes the local veto that those communities relied on.
4. It creates a 20-day default approval window for municipalities.
Under the bill's framework, local governments that fail to respond within prescribed windows risk automatic approval by default. This compresses the community feedback, public comment, and negotiation timelines that residents depend on to influence projects before they break ground.
5. It is the legislative complement to PATER.
PATER identifies and maps the infrastructure corridors. HB 502 removes the local approval barriers that would otherwise slow down development at those sites. Together they form a two-part system: PATER greases the path technically, HB 502 greases it legally. Neither mechanism, on its own, looks like the full picture — but read together they represent a coordinated effort to accelerate data center buildout over community objection.
PENNSYLVANIA,
KNOW YOUR RIGHTS
Article I Section 27 of the Pennsylvania constitution states:
“The people have a right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment. Pennsylvania's public natural resources are the common property of all the people, including generations yet to come. As trustee of these resources, the Commonwealth shall conserve and maintain them for the benefit of all the people.”
The Environmental rights amendment
Structured as it is, in three sentences, the ERA effectively does three things:
It establishes that the people of Pennsylvania have a right to clean air, pure water, and the preservation of natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment.
It establishes that “public natural resources” are the common property of all Pennsylvanians, including future generations.
It makes the Commonwealth—including all levels and branches of government—the trustee of these public natural resources. This means that the Commonwealth has a duty to conserve and maintain Pennsylvania’s public natural resources for the benefit of the people.
The drafters chose to place the ERA in Article I of the Pennsylvania Constitution, otherwise known as the Declaration of Rights, which sets forth what the drafters consider to be “general, great and essential principles of liberty and free government.” This placement means that Pennsylvanians’ environmental rights are placed alongside and on par with our fundamental political rights such as freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, the right to trial by jury, and the right to bear arms. Pennsylvania is one of only four states (along with Montana, Rhode Island, and New York) to elevate and affirm its people’s environmental rights in this way.
GREEN AMENDMENTS FOR THE GENERATIONS
In 2013, the Delaware Riverkeeper Network led by Green Amendments founder & Delaware Riverkeeper Maya van Rossum, won a watershed legal victory that not only protected Pennsylvania communities from ruthless frackers, but affirmed the constitutional right of people in the state to a clean and healthy environment. Following this victory, van Rossum defined the term “Green Amendment” and launched the Green Amendment movement, dedicated to empowering every American community to mobilize for constitutional change in order to protect our environment for present and future generations.
The goal of Green Amendments For The Generations is to advance a national, state by state, Green Amendment movement and to ensure that governments across the nation at the local and state level honor the rights of all people to pure water, clean air, a stable climate and healthy environments in the laws they enact, the decisions they make, and the actions they take by securing the passage of enforceable environmental rights amendments in the Bill of Rights section of every constitution – state and federal – and ensuring their strong and meaningful enforcement.