Energy leaders and state and federal representatives say they will unleash Northeast Pennsylvania’s natural gas reserves for the future of data centers and artificial intelligence.
They said their goal is to cut the process for permits and possibly to create tax exemptions for AI development zones.
U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan said the federal government needs to get “out of the way” of progress. He spoke Friday morning at a meeting focused on "Pennsylvania’s Energy & Economic Opportunity" at Scranton’s Lackawanna College.
“[We need] to empower our state representatives, our state legislators and our commonwealth to be able to make decisions without having to go through the bureaucratic process,” Bresnahan said.
He brought up a meeting he had last week with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation about bridge improvements in Nanticoke. Bresnahan said he had asked how long it would take to finish the project if the federal process runs smoothly.
PennDOT said it would take six years, according to Bresnahan.
“That’s the problem and that's the reality. When you get FHWA (Federal Highway Administration) or federal dollars involved, it opens up a whole new can of worms,” said Bresnahan.
Anthony Pugliese, director of the Office of Technology Transitions and chief commercialization officer of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), added “so much of the time we kill projects because of the lack of permits.”
Several speakers emphasized that Northeast Pennsylvania’s geography makes it ripe for the natural gas industry and technological development.
The gas-rich Marcellus Shale rock formation underlies around two-thirds of the state. Bresnahan and other lawmakers said they want to tap into the billions of dollars “under our feet.”
Kristin Whitman, senior vice president of government relations at the American Petroleum Institute, said Pennsylvania’s natural gas is “essential” to “empowering future industries.” But “unlocking that potential … all comes down to decisions made in Washington.”
“Demand for digital infrastructure is surging, placing data centers at the heart of the future economic growth,” Whitman said.
She highlighted Northeast Pennsylvania as an epicenter for “land, water and above all, reliable power.”
Sam Robinson, a representative from Gov. Josh Shapiro’s office, said Pennsylvania is the country’s third largest energy producer and its need for electricity is growing. Over the next five years, Pennsylvania may have to expand its current capacity by two-thirds to meet demand.
“An absolutely extraordinary amount of power is going to be needed if we seize the full potential of this moment … but Pennsylvania is really well prepared for it. We know how to build things. We have ample resources. And we have really … a history and a culture of building these energy projects and delivering energy to the grid,” said Robinson.
He added that the Shapiro Administration is working to make development more efficient by cutting on permitting times through fast-track review programs.
Energy demand booms in Pennsylvania
John Augustine from Penn’s Northeast, the region’s economic development agency, said that developers want to build at least eight data centers in Northeast Pennsylvania.
“The opportunities are limitless — generating each tax revenue for local municipalities [and] creating above average wages for laborers, which can hire approximately 1,200 people per center,” said Augustine.
Shelby Linton-Keddie, PPL Electric Utility’s senior director of government, regulatory and external affairs, said data centers’ demand for energy will require a huge expansion in electrical output.
Across PPL’s 29-county territory, it serves around 2 million customers with seven-and-a-half gigawatts of energy. In the past year-and-a-half, its contracts with data centers grew from six gigawatts to 11 gigawatts, said Linton-Keddie.
“That seven-and-a-half gigawatts took us 100 years to build. We are projected to more than double that in the next five or six years," said Linton-Keddie.
She said Northeast Pennsylvania will have to be prepared to change for development.
“The electric infrastructure that comes with it is going to be something that this area hasn't seen for a very long time … that 11 gigawatts that we have under agreement … [is] only the beginning," said Linton-Keddie.
If PPL signed off today on all its requests for energy, she said that would total to an additional 50 gigawatts of demand.
Bill Sordoni, CEO of Sordoni Construction Services, said that capitalizing on the potential for development in Northeast Pennsylvania was a “once-in-a-generation opportunity.”
Discussion shifted to whether Pennsylvania legislators would create an AI development zone program which would offer tax breaks to developers investing in AI technology. Pennsylvania currently offers programs like the Keystone Special Development Zone (KSDZ) and the Keystone Opportunity Zone (KOZ) that aim to incentivize economic development.
Robinson and Ryan Aument, a representative from U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick’s office, did not say definitively whether their offices would support the program, but did not outright discount it.
