Sarah: A federal court cleared the queue-reform rule—just as states started asking AI data centers how much water they’re drinking.
Matt: This is The Data Center Daily.
Matt: FERC got a win, Aligned’s $40 billion deal closed, and power and water bills just got a lot less theoretical.
Sarah: First up: does this court win unclog the grid queue—or just remove one excuse for keeping it clogged?
Sarah: Energy-Storage.News's William Norman has been tracking it.
Sarah: The DC Circuit upheld FERC Order 2023 on July 31.
Sarah: Interconnection reform now has firmer legal footing: faster study timelines
Sarah: clearer withdrawal penalties
Sarah: and one less court challenge over projects trying to get energized.
Matt: Good. Grid operators and permitting teams finally got a win.
Matt: But the morning after a court ruling, that 1,400-plus-gigawatt queue is still there, and no substation gets built by appellate opinion.
Sarah: Precisely. The ruling makes the process more durable.
Sarah: It doesn’t add a megawatt
Sarah: but it lets Order 2023 keep moving instead of treating it like a regulatory experiment with a lawsuit-shaped expiration date.
Matt: Look at ERCOT's Batch Zero pause in that context: FERC gets judicial backing to clear the national queue
Matt: while Texas adds another audit gate.
Matt: Very efficient, if the product is delay.
Sarah: Emily Ulizio, writing in National Conference of State Legislatures:
Quote: As demand for artificial intelligence and cloud computing continues to grow
Quote: so does the need for data centers—the massive facilities housing the servers that power AI and the cloud.
Quote: These facilities consume a lot of water, primarily for cooling servers and managing the heat generated by computational processes.
Matt: With queue reform cleared by the court
Matt: states are asking another very practical question: before you permit the data hall
Matt: is there actually water for it?
Sarah: NCSL finds lawmakers in at least six states pursuing water-use reporting or disclosure for data centers.
Sarah: Virginia has already signed a law that takes effect in 2027, requiring suppliers to report monthly potable and reclaimed-water volumes.
Matt: Monthly numbers are excellent.
Matt: “Sustainable cooling” is lovely brochure language.
Matt: Potable versus reclaimed water is what tells the town how much a facility’s actually taking.
Sarah: Water is joining power as a siting gate.
Sarah: Developers will have to show adequate supply and infrastructure before permits clear—an inconvenient detail for anyone treating cooling as a
Sarah: footnote to the megawatt pitch.
Sarah: Jemima Davey, writing in Datacenter Dynamics:
Quote: The $40bn acquisition of Aligned Data Centers has closed.
Quote: The purchase by a consortium comprising the AI Infrastructure Partnership (AIP)
Quote: BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP)
Quote: and Abu Dhabi-based MGX
Quote: was successfully completed this week.
Quote: An additional $5bn was also committed for Aligned's data center expansion.
Sarah: The $40 billion Aligned acquisition closed July 22, with another $5 billion committed for expansion.
Sarah: Finally, a data-center capital story with actual money attached—not just a render and a handshake.
Matt: And they bought the whole thing from Macquarie: 51 campuses and more than 6.4 gigawatts of operational and planned capacity.
Matt: “Operational” and “planned” mean very different things in that sentence.
Sarah: Exactly. The consortium now needs to show how much of that 6.4 gigawatts is energized
Sarah: what comes online when
Sarah: and which customer contracts support the extra $5 billion.
Matt: Forty-five billion dollars buys campuses.
Matt: It doesn’t, by itself, buy transmission, substations, or generation.
Matt: Dallas headquarters stays put; the power problem doesn’t.
Sarah: This one's from Data Center Dynamics:
Quote: The demand for digital and data services continues to grow at an unprecedented rate.
Quote: According to the International Energy Agency (IEA)
Quote: the number of internet users globally has more than doubled since 2010
Quote: while internet traffic has surged 20-fold.
Quote: Despite major efficiency improvements
Quote: workloads handled by large data centers have increased energy consumption by 20-40 percent annually since 2020.
Matt: The IEA says workloads at big data centers have pushed power consumption up 20 to 40 percent a year since 2020.
Matt: And we’re still treating a 100-megawatt PPA like routine procurement?
Matt: Sellers have the leverage now.
Sarah: DCD’s point is narrower
Sarah: and useful: PPAs still anchor net-zero claims
Sarah: but 100-to-200-megawatt-plus contracts are getting tougher as tariffs and equipment costs rise.
Sarah: A signed PPA with a credible in-service date still matters.
Sarah: A sustainability slide isn’t enough.
Matt: The Aligned buyers just committed another $5 billion to expansion.
Matt: Before you call it infrastructure, put the generation, transmission rights, and executed power contracts beside that number.
Sarah: The DC Circuit just upheld FERC Order 2023, so the federal queue rules have firmer legal footing.
Sarah: That helps the process.
Sarah: It doesn’t create a 200-megawatt clean-power contract at a price a data center will sign.
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Host: You’ll find links to every story in the show notes, along with the sources behind today’s briefing.
Host: Dig into whichever ones you want, and we’ll be back Monday.
Host: That’s The Data Center Daily for today.
Host: This is a Lantern Podcast.