Today: a Canadian pension fund, a federal regulator, and a dead Virginia project all showed up to the same buildout. If you're just joining us: in local permitting fights, data centers have moved past generic zoning debates. Now each project gets stress-tested — power availability, water use, blasting, sewer hookups, fire protection, road impacts, and who pays. We've seen it in formal bans and moratoriums, DeSoto County's pause on a DCIP Group proposal, and Kline Township residents pressing AWS through two long planning sessions. You're on The Data Center Daily. Pension money going greenfield, FERC telling the grid operators to show their work, and Georgia Power betting the farm. Let's see if the math holds. Here's James Bradshaw at The Globe and Mail:
Canada Pension Plan Investment Board is investing US$1.75-billion ($2.4-billion) to back a strategy led by Swedish-based EQT Group to build artificial intelligence infrastructure. The deal increases the exposure the country’s largest pension fund has been accumulating to the physical assets that underpin AI, which are being built at breakneck speed.
CPPIB is putting US$1.75 billion into an EQT-led strategy — $2.4 billion Canadian — with the money flowing to EdgeConneX, the developer EQT bought back in 2020. It closed Friday after customary approvals — done deal. And notice the structure here: pension money going into greenfield buildout. EdgeConneX has 10-plus gigawatts it still wants to build. Canada's biggest pension fund is betting on capacity that doesn't exist yet. Which answers a question that's been sitting on this desk. After Realty Income, after Blackstone rotating into DLR stock, now the Canada Pension Plan — that's the third large institutional entry in four days. The template's real. Twenty times the capacity since 2020, more than 20 countries — per the Globe. EdgeConneX is a real operator, not an option dressed up as a deal. The pension people did their homework here. Max Biagosch, their head of real assets, calls it 'durable, long-term demand drivers.' Pension-fund speak for: we think this cash-flows for twenty years. Sure — as long as the 10 gigawatts actually get powered. That's the bet, right? DLR paid the premium for done. CPPIB's taking the greenfield risk instead. Now we find out whether the math holds. Emily Beard, writing in Troutman Pepper Locke:
On June 18, 2026, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”) issued six show cause orders under Section 206 of the Federal Power Act (“FPA”) to each of the country’s regional transmission operators (“RTOs”) and independent system organizations (“ISOs”), along with their transmission owners (collectively, the “Show Cause Orders”).
June 18th, FERC drops six show cause orders — one to every RTO and ISO in the country. Section 206. That's the regulator saying: justify your large-load tariff or change it. And there's a real paper trail behind it — the ANOPR docket, RM26-4, pulled more than 3,500 pages of public comment. This didn't come out of nowhere; it traces back to the Energy Secretary's October 2025 letter. Three 202(c) emergency orders this year, and now, finally, something structural. The grid people have been screaming for this — the ISOs improvising interconnection rules while the load just keeps showing up. And it's the same PJM from the December order — FERC already told them to write clear, transparent tariff terms. Now that pressure moves to all six operators at once, in a show-cause posture. The Telegraph, with Katie Tucker:
In the past six months, Georgia Power has gotten approval to build nearly 10,000 megawatts of new generation capacity and search for up to 6,000 more — a potential addition that could more than double the company’s generation capacity. It’s almost entirely driven by data center demand.
Here's the number: nearly 10,000 megawatts approved in six months, plus authority to hunt for 6,000 more. Georgia Power ended 2024 at roughly 14,800 MW total. So this could more than double the whole fleet. And 15,600 MW already committed to 32 large-load customers — at least 26 of them data centers. That committed demand alone is bigger than the company's entire current capacity serving 2.8 million people. Put that next to the FERC tariff order we just hit — regional operators told to justify or reform their large-load provisions. Then look at Georgia: a vertically integrated utility approving its own buildout, in-house, no RTO in the room. Which is exactly what worries me. The Southern Environmental Law Center's lawyer called it "scary" — his word — and the tell is 21 of 32 projects have broken ground. If even a chunk of that AI demand doesn't materialize, who eats the stranded generation? The 2.8 million existing customers. Every time. The key word there is "committed." Committed doesn't mean energized, and it doesn't mean paid for. But the concrete's already being poured on two-thirds of it. And nobody — not Georgia Power, not the PSC — has put a dollar-per-customer number on the downside. Ten thousand megawatts of bet, zero disclosed ratepayer exposure. That's the filing I want to see. Here's Marketscreener:
Since Oracle submitted comments during the prior public comment period, Project Jupiter's energy plan has changed significantly. The project will now use Bloom Energy fuel cells to power the AI data center campus, replacing the previously proposed gas turbines and diesel generators with a lower-impact fuel cell microgrid. This updated energy approach is designed to support reliable operations while materially reducing regulated emissions and significantly lowering ongoing water demand compared with the prior combustion-based plan.
Oracle filed a letter supporting its own air permit for Project Jupiter down in Doña Ana County — and buried in it is a real change. They dumped the gas turbines and diesel gensets for a Bloom Energy fuel cell microgrid. That's a genuine shift from the January application, not a press-release repaint. Fuel cells as the primary power source, they're claiming materially lower regulated emissions and — the part that matters in southern New Mexico — significantly less water demand. And here's what I actually like — there's a docket. No rumored PPA, no clean-energy hand-wave. You've got Project Jupiter in front of the environment department, with a paper trail you can actually read. Same pattern we've seen in other states — the permitting process catching up to a campus that's already moving. Except here Oracle's out in front of it, on the record, arguing for its own approval. Nothing says 'proud tenant' like a letter to the environment department cheerleading your own emissions filing. But fine — swapping diesel for fuel cells in a desert county where water's the whole ballgame, I'll take the real number over the euphemism. From InsideNoVa.com:
The massive PW Digital Gateway data center project is officially dead after developer QTS withdrew its legal challenge at the Virginia Supreme Court Thursday. At full buildout, the Digital Gateway would have been the largest data center campus in the world, with over 22 million square feet of data centers spread out across 2,000 acres along Pageland Lane adjacent to Manassas National Battlefield Park.
The largest data center campus in the world — 22 million square feet, 2,000 acres along Pageland Lane — is officially dead. QTS withdrew its appeal at the Virginia Supreme Court Thursday, and that's the last legal step. Twenty-two million square feet next to Manassas National Battlefield Park. That was the plan. And the local backlash in Northern Virginia just killed an actual project. Clean version: the courthouse was the final stop, after all the zoning noise. That's one clean sentence on what NOVA permitting friction can cost at the very end of the road. And put it next to what we heard earlier — CPPIB writing a $2.4 billion check into greenfield buildout. Somebody's pension money is chasing capacity while a yearslong saga in rural Prince William gets torched by conservation groups and a citizen coalition. Both true, same week. The Coalition to Protect Prince William called it the arc of justice bending. QTS called it a withdrawal. Either way, the acres stay farmland. If you follow the infrastructure behind AI, you may also like Musk v Altman Daily — a daily court-watch on Elon Musk’s trial against Sam Altman, OpenAI, and Microsoft, from testimony to the AGI governance fight. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts.
You’ll find links to every story we covered today in the show notes, so if one caught your attention, that’s the place to dig in a little further.
That’s The Data Center Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.