Utility chiefs see no data center slowdown as power demand hits records

Utility chiefs at the EEI conference see no slowdown in power demand, Goldman puts AI hardware spending near $1.4 trillion, and the EIA forecasts record U.S. electricity use in 2026 and 2027.

A political chill over the data center boom

The midterm election results raised questions about the data center boom. Newly elected leaders in several states campaigned on promises to go after what they see as affordability problems around data centers, and investors began to ask whether the buildout could stall. Texas, the energy and data center capital, is the state to watch: incoming Governor Gina Hinojosa and incoming Senator James Talarico both campaigned on the issue, while current Governor Greg Abbott has already, and rather quietly, put a pause on data center permitting that has been underway for a few weeks.

Data centers are largely a state issue, and in Texas the power sits with two agencies. The Public Utility Commission of Texas regulates the electricity grid, and its chair, Thomas Gleeson, also sits on the board of the grid operator ERCOT and serves through September 2029. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, run by Brooke Paup, handles environmental permits for off-grid facilities, and Paup serves through next year. If the buildout stalls in Texas, others are ready: Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry and his team are already courting data center companies, and Oklahoma is doing the same.

What the utility chiefs say

At the Edison Electric Institute's annual conference in Arizona, CNBC asked every utility chief executive it spoke with whether they saw any slowdown in their internal electricity growth estimates. All gave the same answer: no. Not Exelon's Calvin Butler. Not Entergy's Drew Marsh. And not Drew Maloney, head of the institute. Data centers are one huge driver of electricity demand, but they are not the only one: electric cars, reshoring manufacturing and the electrification of everything also add demand.

Goldman Sachs, in a note late in the week, said the midterm results pose only modest risks to AI investment, for now. The firm expects newly elected Democratic governors in states that account for over a third of planned US data center capacity to impose moratoria on new data centers, but says those would likely only affect projects not yet permitted, leaving the vast majority of planned 2027 construction unaffected. Goldman still sees spending on AI-related hardware coming in around $1.4 trillion by the end of next year. The caveat, CNBC noted, is that not all planned data centers will be built, and some were shelved before the election.

Record power demand, with or without Texas

The U.S. Energy Information Administration forecasts electricity use of 4,306 billion kilowatt-hours in 2026 and 4,370 billion in 2027, up from 4,216 billion in 2025 — three consecutive years of record consumption, driven by artificial intelligence data centers and growing electrification. The agency expects the U.S. electric power sector to generate almost 4,390 billion kilowatthours in 2026, up 2.7% from 2025, with growth slowing to 1.2% in 2027.

For now, the spending boom keeps going, at least according to the people building the power grid. 'AI and data centers are just energy stories in disguise,' CNBC's Brian Sullivan wrote. The demand is not only about data centers: electric cars, reshoring and electrification all point the same way, and the grid has to grow to meet them.

Sources

• CNBC, 2026-11-13
• EIA, 2026-11-10